The compositions of Colleen, aka multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott, are as richly varied as they are precise. Each of Colleen’s albums are shaped by her predetermined distinct instrumentation and parameters, including works composed entirely of music boxes, pocket synthesizers, and antiquated stringed instruments. The connective essence of Schott’s music is in her ability to create pieces within this transcendent specificity that are both expansive and imbued with profound emotions. Libres antes del final is an album that reaches for the hope and desire to be truly freed from unnecessary suffering and harmful thoughts before reaching the end of one’s life cycle.

“In April 2024, I decided that deeply impacted me, one on which I had procrastinated for years: learning to swim again, in the sea, after 30 years of water phobia. I came to see and live the journey of learning to swim again as an adult, with each successive step feeling like a personal victory and milestone, in the unstable environment of the sea, with the discomfort it can bring, and the reality of facing your own limitations with the body and mind you have right now, a powerful metaphor for what it’s like to have to learn to live and go through life every single day. I was especially blown away by the fact that it took me way longer to start to swim 5 cm away from where my feet still touched the ground, than it subsequently took me to swim 250 meters away from the shore. Could this mean that everything in life works this way, that the first small step really is the hardest to take?” - Colleen

Schott composed and performed Libres on the Moog Matriarch, centering the record on a pulse-driven, bubbling energy with constant momentum. She then reamped the music in one of her favorite spaces in Barcelona, Casa Montjuic, accentuating the album’s sense of movement. The reamping process adds a literal physicality to the album, as carefully chosen and placed microphones (including the famous Neumann KU100 binaural head) capture both the venue’s PA sound itself and the venue’s acoustics.

Colleen’s music translates snapshots of Schott’s life into singular pieces, often instrumentally transmuting a dense web of sensations into wondrous sonic terrain. Schott’s deft manipulation of the Moog Matriarch makes each subtle adjustment feel monumental. The tender “Mis armas se habían caído al suelo” skitters sonar-like echoes across a warm pool of organ chords before giving in to a gentle wash of oceanic feedback. The bounce of “Puertas de mi cuerpo” is transformed by every textural shift where the steady arpeggio of “Antídoto” is broken apart by dizzying shifts in pulse. “Aguas abiertas” (or, “Open Waters”) stands as the cinematic centerpiece to the album as each movement dives deeper beneath the surface and reflects the magic of discovering microcosms on every level one plunges further down. Title track “Libres antes del final” harnesses the album’s sense of urgency as the intensity swells and undulates into a climactic conclusion unlike any piece Schott has made before.

Colleen’s music ruminates on central existential questions: To what extent are we responsible for our thinking, feelings and actions? Can we ever be freed from the endlessly spinning twin wheels of our own brain and heart? Libres antes del final answers them with an exuberant release, a work of rejuvenation and revitalization, of finding light in facing the unknown.