ARTICLES
Ten Questions: Fat Jon
MUTEK 2006

ALBUMS
65daysofstatic
A Cloud Mireya
Ambarchi and Ng
Another Elec. Musician
Derek Bailey
Band Ane
Barzin
Black Gold 360
The Blow
Boduf Songs
Childs
Darc Mind
Dosh
Duopandamix
Fat Jon & Styrofoam
Liam Gillick
Shuta Hasunuma
Tim Hecker
Ilkae
Jack's Son
Richard Jäverling
Jazzkammer
Junior Boys
Last Days
Hanno Leichtmann
Luomo
Mandelbrot Set
Mountaineer
N.Phect & Dizplay
Part Timer
Karsten Pflum
Benoît Pioulard
Plus Device
+/- {Plus/Minus}
Relay
Saroos
Seht
Shedding
So Percussion
Sybarite
Trio Vopá
Marshall Watson
Weather Report
Donato Wharton
Christopher Willits
Xela

COMPILATIONS/MIXES
ESL Remixed
Four Tet
Garnier & Craig
Ginglik Saturdays
Michael Mayer
Henrik Schwarz

3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs
Colleen
Delano and Xpansul
Detritus
Ed Devane
Eskimo
Feathers
Goldmund
Ezekiel Honig/Graphic
Ezekiel Honig
Eliot Lipp
Robert Lippok
Alejandro Lopez
Evan Marc
Porter & Carr
Sebastian Russell
Somone Else
Spaceships & Pings
SplitEP3
Simon Whetham

Colleen: Colleen et les boîtes à musique
Leaf

Any listener familiar with Cécile Schott's previous Colleen output might expect her to bring a characteristically unique slant to her ‘music box' project, and on that count Colleen et les boîtes à musique (‘Colleen and the music boxes') doesn't disappoint. Whatever seeming limitations the iridescently chiming instrument might possess are transcended handily, as Colleen coaxes a startlingly broad spectrum of sounds from the device. She does so by using a variety of music boxes (everything from large Victorian to miniature models), by playing them in often unorthodox manner (using fingers and mallets, for example), and by ranging far beyond the traditional, child-centered style associated with the instrument.

On the one hand, the 14-song EP (the pieces initially created when Atelier de Création Radiophonique, France's national radio station, approached her to compose material for an exclusive broadcast) includes sparkling wonderlands that exploit the instrument's ‘tinkling' quality (the equally lulling and entrancing “What is a Componium?” and trilling “Under the Roof”). Other tracks evidence little of that crystalline sound: “Charles's Birthday Card” more resembles a calliope as it coughs up its stuttering "Rock-a-bye-baby" melody while the “Pop Goes the Weasel” variant “A Bear Is Trapped” literally suggests a large animal struggling to escape some predicament. Elsewhere, electronic processing gives “The Sad Panther” an ethereal quality, and the boxes in “Will You Gamelan For Me?” convincingly approximate a gamelan percussion ensemble. The transformations are so convincing, one could be excused for mistaking a music box's sound for a harp's glistening strum or a Fender Rhodes' warm glow. At disc's end, the bewitching “I'll Read You A Story” is reprised from 2005's The Golden Morning Breaks—a natural move given its music box essence, although it is supplemented by classical guitar (the EP also includes Jon Nordstrom's video of the piece).

Someone once noted that Picasso was such a great artist, he could eat fish for lunch and, using the leftover skeleton, have a great work of art finished by day's end. Though obviously they're radically different artists, they are alike in at least one sense: Colleen proves here that, like Picasso, she's eminently capable of conjuring magic using the simplest of musical means.

November 2006