Graded on a Curve: Colleen,
The Tunnel and
the Clearing

Across two decades and seven LPs, Cécile Schott, who records as Colleen, has grown into one of contemporary music’s most reliably interesting creators. Schott, a native of France currently living in Barcelona, Spain, recorded her latest at home from October 25 to December 1 of last year, producing and mixing the record along with playing everything herself; the instruments include a Yamaha organ, assorted analog electronics, Moog effects, and her voice. That makes The Tunnel and the Clearing a truly solo pandemic experience, but it never registers as a compromise, nor does it even connect as an outlier in the fertile Colleen discography. It’s out now on LP, CD and digital through Thrill Jockey of Chicago.

Cécile Schott recorded The Tunnel and the Clearing last autumn, but only after a significant delay, having initially commenced her follow-up to 2017’s outstanding A flame my love, a frequency the very next year, only to be stricken by fatigue brought on by illness. Treatment followed, as did coping with the ensuing life changes. And then more. After Schott moved home and studio to Barcelona, the Covid-19 lockdown came, and then finally, there was the end of a longtime partnership.

By any reasonable metric, that’s a tough stretch. Although not autobiographical or confessional in nature, The Tunnel and the Clearing reflects these personal circumstances through emotional richness that’s heightened by Schott’s well-established attention to acoustics and her dedication to a wide instrumental palette, as she’s previously utilized the viola da gamba, classical guitar, vintage music boxes, crystal glass singing bowls, clarinet, spinet, and melodica.

It’s also noteworthy that recording truly solo is standard practice for Schott, though that doesn’t mean this time wasn’t distinct, as she has related how the long stretches of lockdown silence intensified her perception of music’s ability to express the range of human emotion. It’s also not her first time tapping into the potential of electronics, as A flame my love, a frequency featured two Critter & Guitari brand synths, the Pocket Piano and the Septavox, plus a Moog delay.

The Tunnel and the Clearing begins sans voice with “The Crossing,” mingling an incessant Yamaha Reface YC organ pattern with the simple and equally constant rhythmic thump of a Elka Drummer One analog drum machine. That same device is responsible for a percussive element, hovering somewhere between a maraca and a snare drum, that dissipates mid-way through the track. And there’s a third layer, a peppering of reverberating electronic cascades that comes courtesy of a Roland RE-201 Space Echo.

Altogether, “The Crossing” suggests anticipation and then a gradually accumulating sense of discovery, though obviously the title reinforces this reading. “Revelation” offers an immediate contrast, in large part through Schott’s vocal, breathy but intense and direct (“Truth…reveal yourself to me”), but also through the baroque-shading of the organ.

There is also much swirling, pulsating and echoing as Schott employs both a Moog Grandmother and a MF104M Analog Delay. In the piece’s latter portion, after a striking instrumental midsection, her singing soars (“I rise up…I rise up,” along with wordless flights), and the effect is sublime. It’s followed by “Implosion-Explosion,” which sends the Elka Drummer One into overdrive and gives late-night bedroom techno (nicely enhanced by Schott’s “oh-ah-ah” refrain) an infusion of the electro-psychedelic.

But it’s the title track that really magnifies the breadth of the album’s sonic landscape, starting out with a blend of distorted throb and melody reminiscent of indie-electronica (somewhere in the vicinity if the late ’90s-early ’00s), but then shifting into a cleaner environment, at first more clinical, that slowly morphs into a zone that’s a bit like Terry Riley, circa the mid-’70s, creating soundtracks for workplace short films, and with an emphasis on the sheer wonderment of possibility.

If that’s all sounding a little (or a lot) grandiose, Schott’s solo mode and her home studio approach maintain the record’s sense of scale, and when her vocals return in “Gazing at Taurus – Santa Eulalia,” they bring with them a gush of the vivid that firmly establishes The Tunnel and the Clearing’s sustained worthiness and situates it as a wholly satisfying follow-up to the brilliance of her prior effort, which shared the top spot on this website’s Best New Releases of 2017 list.

Let’s just say there hasn’t been a musical moment in 2021 that I’ve enjoyed more than when Schott sings “travel through the tunnel…travel through the tunnel…make it through the tunnel…make it through the tunnel…” And hey, the year’s nearly half over. From there, instrumental “Gazing at Taurus – Night Sky Rumba” doesn’t reach as high of an emotional plateau but does offer a mini fiesta of inspired analog construction.

It sets up “Hidden in the Current,” a finale palpitating and increasingly cyclical but also drifting, in large part due to the hazy nature of the vocals. It’s also the track where the use of vintage tech is screamingly up-to-date, which isn’t a surprise. Neither is that The Tunnel and the Clearing chalks up another masterful record for Cécile Schott as Colleen.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A

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