COLLABORATION WITH MONIQUE VAN NIEUWLAND

After our first successful collaboration, I have again teamed up with Australian based textile artist Monique Van Nieuwland for her exhibition entitled "Ocean Forest" which will be presented at Sturt Gallery.

Similar to our last collaboration, Monique has used found objects collected from beaches (such as discarded plastic bags and fishing lines) to create beautiful large scale textile pieces.  Monique recorded the sounds of her weaving those objects, and using those sounds, I created a number of ocean 'sound vignettes' which will accompany her textile pieces in the gallery.



Review on Disquiet

Disquiet is a website that I frequent a lot.  It contains insightful write ups, new music finds and is the spiritual home of the incredible ongoing project "Disquiet Junto" in which the organiser Marc sets weekly musical projects and people all around the world contribute their ideas.

I was thrilled to discover that the following kind words were recently featured on Disquiet about my current monthly collaboration with Monolyth & Cobalt:

"Madeleine Cocolas — born in Australia, based in Seattle — has begun a new monthly music series, each track of which is a collaboration with Monolyth & Cobalt. There are two tracks in their effort so far. The series follows Cocolas’ previous “Fifty-Two Weeks” project (see madeleinecocolas.blogspot.com), which took longer than one full year for her to complete, but during which she managed all manner of musical exercises. Like the most memorable of the Fifty-Two Weeks music, the first track in her new series with Monolyth & Cobalt achieves a natural, patient balance between classical ambient music and, well, actual classical music, of the chamber variety. Lens-flare synthesis finds its match in elegant, patiently revealed arrangements for more “traditional” instrumentation. The second track opens with a texture that seems alien to the first one, the rough sound of dirt, of gravel, of vinyl surface noise. That sound, which suggests slow toil and a state of disrepair, underlies an angelic vocal line, amid soft, lightly transformed touches of piano, until closing with a horn like that of a forlorn lighthouse."

Article in The Stranger

A week ago, music writer Kyle Fleck from The Stranger interviewed me about my Fifty Two Weeks Project and wrote a lovely article on my project which you can read by clicking on the link below!  

"Straddling the amorphous border between classical, ambient, minimal, and drone music, Cocolas's 52 pieces offer an amazingly diverse, panoramic trip through sonic realms both welcoming and disorienting.... Chiming bells rub up against oceanic bass drones, skittering drums dance over protean synth washes. Though a sort of beatific, ethereal vibe ties the project together, the pieces run an astounding range of emotions and palettes given the condensed work period."


Monolyth & Cobalt: Month One Project

I'm very excited to say I have started a collaboration with French composer and multi-instrumentalist Mathias Van Eecloo, aka Monolyth & Cobalt. 

Mathias will be reworking pieces from my 52 Weeks project (in chronological order) and we will be posting new pieces every month on SoundCloud for 12 months.  Our first track is finished, and you can take a listen to it here:

Collaboration with Monique Van Nieuwland

I'm very excited to to announce that I will be collaborating with Australian textile artist Monique van Nieuwland on her upcoming exhibition which explores environmental themes including the impact of pollution on our oceans. 

Monique will create a woven work using pollutant materials sourced from the ocean (such as discarded fishing line, plastic bags), and I will create an 'Oceanscape'  sound installation to accompany Monique's work that will be created solely from sounds recorded during the weaving process. 

Our combined work will be touring across various galleries throughout Australia for the next two years. 

Here are some examples of Monique's work using these techniques: