Colleen, aka multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott, has announced her new album Libres antes del final, out March 20th, 2026. Along with the album’s announcement, Schott has shared a string of special tour dates throughout the US and EU including a set at Long Play Festival, as well as the the clarion single “Antídoto,” a sparkling whirlwind of synthesis. She elaborates on the track’s place in the album:
“I think the album in general has a tense and at times rather dark energy, and “Antídoto,” bang in the middle of the album, acts as the positive counterweight and joyful centerpiece. It is the sun-drenched, edgy reply to moments when you feel anger, it is my musical way of saying I can turn the situation upside down and build my own antidote to the negative feelings consuming me. It has the energy of “I’m not going to let things get in my way.””
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?”
The compositions of Colleen 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.
Colleen tour dates:
Apr. 26 – Barcelona, ES – Foggy hex presents (double show)
May 2 – Brooklyn, NY – Long Play Festival at Public Records
May 6 – Chicago, IL – Constellation
May 7 – Portland, OR – Beacon Sound presents
May 9 – San Francisco, CA – The Lab
May 26 – Berlin, DE – Silent Green
June 11 – Brussels, BE – Le Botanique
* w/ Midori Hirano
