Artist: Colleen Title: Everyone Alive Wants Answers Label: Leaf/Inertia File Under: The Teddybear's Picnic on Acid RIYL: Ryuchi Sakamoto, Labradford, Goldfrapp There are a few possible approaches to the debut album by Colleen aka Parisienne Cecile Schoott. One is to think of a delicate pixie alive in a field of glockenspiels and harpsichords, dancing gleefully until she realises every string she hits disappears making her music more and more fragile. Another is to quietly creep under your flatmate's doona at 4am playing a windup jackinthebox as storm winds blow all around. Creepy, at times immanently breakable, melodic yet bizarre, it's as if Colleen has taken her laptop inside a head full of childhood memories and come back with Everyone. Like other examples in the comminuted world of ambient electronica, much of the experience is in the listening. One friend of mine was freaked by the children's voices looped on "Carry-cat" whilst another called it perverted lullaby music as she fell softly into sleep. Whatever the case, Colleen seems intent on creating an aura of darkness and dreamlike decay amongst her dewy-eyed fields of melodic aural blossomings. Like the sirens who called to Odysseus, Colleen's album is weird, almost hallucinogenic yet strangely compelling and alluring. Approach with equal parts caution and abandon.