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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
First of all, it should be said that I am something of a Colleen enthusiast! I have enjoyed all of her beguiling releases to date, and I am happy to say that this latest is no exception. It is forty minutes of other-worldly, evocative sounds. Sure, the premise doesn't sound as promising as it could be: "A 14 track EP of music box recordings". Before listening, I had reservations about the music maybe being a little to monotonous and one-dimensional. Is it? IS IT HELL!
The first thing I realised is just how damned beautiful and organic the sound of the music box is. Clockwork clicks and whirls, metal is plucked to ring out shiny, resonant chimes. Dischordant notes flow in to each other like muted church bells clashing head on. We hear crackles and pops in the background. This music is alive. It has it's own pulse.
Each track differs from the last, whilst complimenting it perfectly. Delay pedals are utilised to full effect, looping up dark minor chords on the music box. Sometimes it sounds as if just one solitary box is playing. Sometimes the musical motifs are replayed backwards to create a wonderfully dizzying effect. At other times the chimes build and build until we are lost inside a MUSIC BOX SYMPHONY! When the music peaks, I often find myself in a levitative state. It is deeply affecting.
Basically, this EP is fantastic. Colleen at her intimate best. Listen to it at night, and feel as if you are inside a dark, misty and gorgeously melancholy fairy tale.
The first thing I realised is just how damned beautiful and organic the sound of the music box is. Clockwork clicks and whirls, metal is plucked to ring out shiny, resonant chimes. Dischordant notes flow in to each other like muted church bells clashing head on. We hear crackles and pops in the background. This music is alive. It has it's own pulse.
Each track differs from the last, whilst complimenting it perfectly. Delay pedals are utilised to full effect, looping up dark minor chords on the music box. Sometimes it sounds as if just one solitary box is playing. Sometimes the musical motifs are replayed backwards to create a wonderfully dizzying effect. At other times the chimes build and build until we are lost inside a MUSIC BOX SYMPHONY! When the music peaks, I often find myself in a levitative state. It is deeply affecting.
Basically, this EP is fantastic. Colleen at her intimate best. Listen to it at night, and feel as if you are inside a dark, misty and gorgeously melancholy fairy tale.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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5 reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Chunky gamelan
28 July 2007
Format:Audio CD
Brassy, spectral percussion.
Stark, intimate and boldly intense. Blooms of bicycle bell, musical box and every manner of metal chime, grungily recorded in an up close and personal fashion. Strange and indulgent, reveling in the sensuality of its own clank, scrack and visceral punch.
For all it's minimalism this heady music is perfumed and exotic, richly harmonious and rippling with pulsating rhythm. Almost ecstatic, like medieval religious music.
Stark, intimate and boldly intense. Blooms of bicycle bell, musical box and every manner of metal chime, grungily recorded in an up close and personal fashion. Strange and indulgent, reveling in the sensuality of its own clank, scrack and visceral punch.
For all it's minimalism this heady music is perfumed and exotic, richly harmonious and rippling with pulsating rhythm. Almost ecstatic, like medieval religious music.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A winter wonderland!
20 Dec 2008
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
First off I must preface this with a few words. My review is based solely on a personal experience with the music and no real familiarity with music box genre works. In fact I know of only one other CD that is primarily focused on the music box, 'Outlier, New Music for Music Boxes' by john Morton. That is also a nice CD but quite different than this one.
This CD Colleen et les Boites a Musique is like a glimpse into a frozen wonderland. Imagine being a child and wandering in a forest of twinkling ice and snow where the sounds of lullabies call you off to a dreamy state. There is always the threat of cold so be mindful but also enjoy it's invigorating presence as recalled while listening. The play between melody and apparent randomized musings adds to the sense of an invoked dream world where around every talking tree sized icicle another spectacle is had. Several of the tracks do fall off this path a bit for me but overall I recommend this for anybody that takes great pleasure in all that is winter!
I would be curious to see if the intent of the artist was to recall the sense of winter.
This CD Colleen et les Boites a Musique is like a glimpse into a frozen wonderland. Imagine being a child and wandering in a forest of twinkling ice and snow where the sounds of lullabies call you off to a dreamy state. There is always the threat of cold so be mindful but also enjoy it's invigorating presence as recalled while listening. The play between melody and apparent randomized musings adds to the sense of an invoked dream world where around every talking tree sized icicle another spectacle is had. Several of the tracks do fall off this path a bit for me but overall I recommend this for anybody that takes great pleasure in all that is winter!
I would be curious to see if the intent of the artist was to recall the sense of winter.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Icy and delicate, gentle and playful.
22 July 2007
Format:Audio CD
France Culture's Atelier De Création Radiophonique, a national radio station, commissioned Cécile Schott (Colleen) to record music for a special broadcast. Over a two year period, Schott had created a number of songs that were made entirely of music box recordings. Schott was so pleased with the results that she decided to let Leaf Records release the collection as an EP (along with one extra track).
Colleen is not the first electronic musician to work with music boxes. Their whimsical draw has courted a number of other artists, most famously, Richard D. James and Bjork Guðmundsdóttir. With Colleen et Les Boites a Musique, however, the approach is different. The music box is not just a tool used in a song, but a complete exploration of an instrument's possibilities. Colleen takes the boxes further than her contemporaries. She studies them. She manipulates them. She makes them her own.
Colleen pulls a remarkable range of sounds from the simple boxes. The echoy goodness of "What Is a Componium?, Pt1" sounds as if wind chimes were being blown in melodic patterns. The notes on "Under the Roof" seem to lock together like the strings on a harp. The tonal percussions of "Will You Gamelan for Me" and "Calypso in a Box" mimic a Trinidadian Steel Drum.
She uses the boxes to display emotion and create a sense of feeling. With its floating atmosphere, "The Sad Panther" is one of Colleen et Les Boites a Musique's standout tracks. Recordings of soft melodies are played backwards, collapsing into another, and softy shift into a dreamy darkness. The tenderness displayed by this 2 minute track rivals other artist's entire careers.
Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is an EP that switches its moods while keeping its sound. It moves from mournful hymns to lighthearted carols effortlessly. For example, in direct contract to the gloom of "The Sad Painter", is the more lighthearted, "Charles's Birthday Card." This song is a disheveled manipulation of "Rock a Bye Baby." The notes are slowed and awkwardly timed with forced rests that intentionally impede and a l t e r the flow. This changes a traditional classic into something different. The trick is repeated with "A Bear Is Trapped." Here, different sections of "Pop Goes the Weasel" are sped up, slowed down, and reinterpreted. The pay-off has been taken; the weasel never pops. These songs work so well because the originals are so implanted into the collective consciousness that the alterations are clumsy, unexpected, and completely original.
Icy and delicate, gentle and playful, Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is a remarkably deep study of the music box in contemporary songwriting.
Colleen is not the first electronic musician to work with music boxes. Their whimsical draw has courted a number of other artists, most famously, Richard D. James and Bjork Guðmundsdóttir. With Colleen et Les Boites a Musique, however, the approach is different. The music box is not just a tool used in a song, but a complete exploration of an instrument's possibilities. Colleen takes the boxes further than her contemporaries. She studies them. She manipulates them. She makes them her own.
Colleen pulls a remarkable range of sounds from the simple boxes. The echoy goodness of "What Is a Componium?, Pt1" sounds as if wind chimes were being blown in melodic patterns. The notes on "Under the Roof" seem to lock together like the strings on a harp. The tonal percussions of "Will You Gamelan for Me" and "Calypso in a Box" mimic a Trinidadian Steel Drum.
She uses the boxes to display emotion and create a sense of feeling. With its floating atmosphere, "The Sad Panther" is one of Colleen et Les Boites a Musique's standout tracks. Recordings of soft melodies are played backwards, collapsing into another, and softy shift into a dreamy darkness. The tenderness displayed by this 2 minute track rivals other artist's entire careers.
Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is an EP that switches its moods while keeping its sound. It moves from mournful hymns to lighthearted carols effortlessly. For example, in direct contract to the gloom of "The Sad Painter", is the more lighthearted, "Charles's Birthday Card." This song is a disheveled manipulation of "Rock a Bye Baby." The notes are slowed and awkwardly timed with forced rests that intentionally impede and a l t e r the flow. This changes a traditional classic into something different. The trick is repeated with "A Bear Is Trapped." Here, different sections of "Pop Goes the Weasel" are sped up, slowed down, and reinterpreted. The pay-off has been taken; the weasel never pops. These songs work so well because the originals are so implanted into the collective consciousness that the alterations are clumsy, unexpected, and completely original.
Icy and delicate, gentle and playful, Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is a remarkably deep study of the music box in contemporary songwriting.
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