Colleen

On her sophomore album, The Golden Morning Breaks, Parisian Cécile Schott (a.k.a. Colleen) ditches the samples that dominated her 2003 debut, Everyone Alive Wants Answers, for some found sounds of her own making. Like a one-woman Animal Collective, Schott composes her music to sound spontaneous, as if each lovely melody (from a variety of sources, including the piano, guitar, glockenspiel, harmonicon, a music-box flutter, and even tape recorders manipulated to produce hissing noises) just happens to emerge, exist, and crisscross with the others. The beatless Breaks drifts in and out, blurring and sharpening. It's not for the short-fused or impatient, but concentration is a small price to pay for beauty here.