The Golden Morning Breaks, by Colleen
by Ian Simmons
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Cecile Schott, who records as Colleen for reasons best known to herself, made quite a stir with her 2003 debut Everyone Alive Wants Answers, which radiated a warm ambient haze undepinned by delicate beats and well-chosen samples inhabiting somewhere vaguely near the Boards of Canada neighbourhood. For this follow-up, though, she takes a different tack and eschews both beats and samples to rely on live acoustic instruments, ranging from guitars to a glass harmonicom. The result is feather-light and evanescent and almost too thin, disappearing into the woodwork at whatever volume you play it. OK - I know ambient music is supposed to sit in the background, but you can be too ambient for your own good, and this is definitely bordering on that. While it takes in influences from John Dowland's 16th century lute songs, music for the viola da gamba, kora and gamelan, Indonesian folk and modern classical music, it does end up bleaching them out to a consistently pretty, but ultimately inconsequential, result. It makes Virginia Astley look muscular and Vashti Bunyan positively butch. However, I wouldn-t want you to get the impression I don't like it, far from it; it is most pleasant and an excellent accompaniment to doing the washing-up while looking out of an open window onto the garden on a warm, sunny August day, or playing in a traffic queue to calm the anger (where the Stooges, for example, would be nearly fatal). I am sure this album was instrumental in getting me up the M5 without going postal a couple of weeks back. So, not the most riveting album of 2005, but a charming and pleasant one, and there is certainly a place in most CD collections for one or two of those.
