new EP from Colleen

"We started to record the music boxes but things turned out differently from what I had expected; the melodies weren't that interesting and were actually quite cheesy. And then I happened to bend and stroke the comb (the music box is basically like a rolling pin, kind of like a big pin full of small staples or spikes and they're the ones that, when the pin turns or revolves, lift the blades from a metal comb) and, struck by what I heard, started to experiment with the comb itself. When played manually with my thumbnails or with the glass harmonicum's small mallets, a very rich sound is produced that's reminiscent of gamelan, marimba, and glockenspiel, and all sorts of sounds mixed into one. I recorded some really old and battered music boxes and some of my own which are either hand-cranked or mechanical; I also used a componium, a music box into which you feed strips of paper that you punch yourself, like a player piano."