Summary: Cécile Schott, a musician and composer originally from outside of Paris, has been making music since she was 15 and she started releasing albums under the name Colleen at age 27. She has 6 full albums and 1 EP in total, her most recent album being Captain of None, released in April of 2015 with Thrill Jockey Records. Our talented sound designer and friend, Billy Wirasnik, has been a long time fan of Colleen. Billy calls her work, “The music a beautiful brain would make if you could plug a quarter inch jack into it.” Cécile uses repetitive loops of old scratchy recordings, instruments like the glockenspiel, guitar, viola da gamba, bells, chimes and a variety of music boxes to make up the sounds in different combinations across her albums, building mysterious atmospheres that can be dark and playful at the same time. Colleen tracks differ from album to album, but are all unified by a tenderness, a curiosity, and a will to experiment and play, always taking you somewhere you weren’t expecting. In this episode, we talk about falling in and out of love with music, taking time to pursue other creative outlets, an artistic response to hardships and tragedy, and really, just living a simple, happy life.
