There’s something disarming about music that announces itself quietly. Colleen‘s new single Mis armas se habían caído al suelo — Spanish for “My weapons had fallen to the floor” — doesn’t so much begin as surface, rising through layers of warm organ and tentative synth like a held breath finally released. It’s the opening piece from her forthcoming album Libres antes del final, due March 20th via Thrill Jockey, and it sets the tone for what Cécile Schott describes as the most emotionally intense work of her career.
The track’s three insistent chords pulse with a sonar-like persistence, while a melodic line picks its way through with the cautious momentum of someone learning to trust open water. Which is fitting: the album was born, in part, from Schott confronting a lifelong fear of swimming, and the personal revelations that followed. That sense of submersion and resurfacing, of vulnerability as a necessary precondition for change, saturates every second of this single.
Schott has spoken at length about the piece’s evolution: “‘Mis armas se habían caído al suelo’ (My weapons had fallen to the floor) is a declaration of vulnerability, acting as a prologue to what I consider to be the most musically dense and emotionally intense album of my discography. To arrive at its simplicity, brevity and the sonar-like insistence of its first melodic notes, it took me a lot of detours: a totally different song was initially meant to be the opening track, one of the very first I worked on when I started to get acquainted with the Moog Matriarch. I put it aside to keep experimenting and composing, but once I finally completed the rest of the album, I couldn’t help but notice that this first song now sat incongruously along the rest of the material.
“I finally decided to ditch it completely and re-approach the meaning of the words of the title from a different musical perspective: what would metaphorically ‘putting down my weapons’ actually sound like, the peculiar mixture of fear, hope and surrender? I realized that the musical answer lay in a combination of extreme simplicity through three insistent chords and a melodic line acting as a voice that reaches from the abyss and comes up to the surface to stutter, wonder, hesitate, then slowly give in.”
It’s a process that mirrors the album’s broader themes. Libres antes del final is, in Schott’s words, “an ode to movement, to the body, to water, to urgency; to repairing old wounds, overcoming personal blocks and starting all over again.” Schott’s deft manipulation of the Moog Matriarch has always made subtle adjustments feel monumental, and here that sensitivity is channelled into something almost elemental — the sound of defences dissolving.
Colleen has announced additional tour dates in support of the album, including sets at the upcoming Rewire Festival in the Netherlands and Waking Life Festival.
Colleen tour dates
Apr. 10-12 – Den Haag, NL – Rewire Festival
Apr. 26 – Barcelona, ES – Foggy hex presents at Casa Montjuic + Laut (double show)
May 2 – Brooklyn, NY – Long Play Festival at Public Records
May 3 – Philadelphia, PA – Making Time presents at Johnny Brenda’s
May 6 – Chicago, IL – Constellation
May 7 – Portland, OR – Beacon Sound presents
May 9 – San Francisco, CA – The Lab
May 11 – Los Angeles, CA – 2220 Arts + Archive
May 26 – Berlin, DE – Silent Green *
Jun. 11 – Brussels, BE – Le Botanique
June 10 – London, UK – TBA
Jun. 22 – Crato, PT – Waking Life Festival
* w/ Midori Hirano