Colleen et Les Boites A Musique - Colleen et Les Boites a Musique

  by Andrew Carver

published: 20 / 10 / 2006

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Back in High School Physics class, my fellow students and I studied the intersection of wave patterns in shallow dishes of water. A pair of vibrating rods would be placed in the pans, sending off concentric waves, until they intersected, creating a dappled pattern where they intersected. The cover of 'Colleen et Les Boites a Musique' boasts a similar visual imagery – fingerprint like whorls on a black background, two of which overlap to form a crosshatched section. It’s an apt visual metaphor for the album’s musical methodology, in which the sound from various music boxes has been sampled, tweaked and overlapped to create turn-of-the-19th century techno music. The music on ‘Colleen et Les Boites a Musique’ was commissioned by French public radio. The broadcaster gave Colleen (a.k.a. Cecile Schott) free rein, and the French musician created a logical extension of her earlier work. On her first album ‘Everyone Alive Wants Answers’, Colleen sampled records from her personal collection to make minimalist dreamscapes. On her second, ‘The Golden Morning Breaks’, she played various instruments herself, including such archaic oddities as the harmonicon, along with some overdubbing and copious effects. For ‘Colleen et Les Boites a Musique’ she’s gone further into the music-making world of bygone days, building the 39-minute CD almost entirely from the sounds of music boxes. The first track ‘John Levers the Ratchet’ consists of the noise of the boxes being wound – no doubt the John of the title is John Cavanagh of Electroscope and Phosphene. He supplied the boxes used in the recording, handled the recording on many of the tracks. Cavanagh has used music boxes in his own music like ‘Tirana Calls’ on ‘Projections’. Sometimes the music is very reminiscent of IDM, as in ‘Calypso In A Box’, a short but speedy song. Other numbers are closer to the music boxes’ original roots: The melody from ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ surfaces in ‘Charle’s Birthday Card’. The shadow of world music passes over the ringing sounds of ‘Will You Gamelan for Me?’, which does indeed sound like Indonesian gamelan music, while ‘A Bear is Trapped’ sounds something like African thumb piano (unsurprising, in so far as the mechanical action of the music box and the likembe, mbira, etc. are similar). The varied possibilities of the boxes aside, the best track is the final one 'I'll Read You A Story' , where a classical guitar is added to the music. Its spooky arpeggios make for the most compelling juxtaposition with the reversed sounds of the music boxes. ‘Colleen et les Boites a Musique’ is an interesting reverie.

Track Listing:-

1 John Levers The Ratchet
2 What Is A Componium ? - Part 1
3 Charles’s Birthday Card
4 Will You Gamelan For Me ?
5 The Sad Panther
6 Under The Roof
7 What Is A Componium ? - Part 2
8 A Bear Is Trapped
9 Please Gamelan Again
10 Your Heart Is So Loud
11 Calypso In A Box
12 Bicycle Bells
13 Happiness Nuggets
14 I’ll Read You A Story

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