The compositions of Colleen, aka multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott, are as richly varied as they are precise. Each of Colleen’s albums is shaped by her predetermined distinct instrumentation and parameters, including works composed entirely of music boxes, pocket synthesizers, and baroque stringed instruments. The connective essence of Schott’s music is in her ability to create pieces within specificity that are both transcendently 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.

Schott sees the album as “an ode to movement, to the body, to water, to urgency; to repairing old wounds, overcoming personal blocks and starting all over again.” The initial spark of Libres antes del final was borne of a realization perhaps best described by Schott herself:

“In April 2024, I made a decision 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 longed for a reconnection to that feeling I had felt as a child swimming so freely and confidently, and when I moved to Barcelona in 2019, the sight of the Mediterranean Sea made me feel this limitation more and more acutely with each passing year. A show in the Azores in March 2024, corresponding to my 250th live show, functioned as a wakeup call for me: surrounded by this gorgeous environment where seeing dolphins is the norm, I realized I had to stop making excuses, and a month later, I finally contacted an open water teacher.

“I came to view the journey of learning to swim again as an adult as a powerful metaphor for what it’s like to learn to navigate life every single day, with each successive step feeling like a personal victory and milestone, in the unstable environment of the sea, its discomfort, the doubts about your abilities and the reality of facing your own limitations.

“I was especially blown away by the fact that it took me way longer to start to swim 5cm 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?”

Schott composed and performed Libres on the Moog Matriarch, centering the record on a pulse-driven, bubbling energy with constant momentum, which she attributes to “being catapulted into another area of my life, centered on being physically active.” She then reamped the music in one of her favorite venues 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” (Spanish for “My weapons had fallen to the floor”) 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” (“Gates of my body”) is transformed by every textural shift whereas the colliding arpeggios of “Antídoto” (“Antitdote”) are broken apart by dizzying shifts in pulse. “Aguas abiertas” (“Open waters”) stands as the cinematic centerpiece to the album as each movement dives deeper beneath the surface, reflecting the complex layers and changes of intensity of life itself. Title track “Libres antes del final” (“Free before the ending”) 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.