Colin Stetson’s latest album The love it took to leave you, was recorded over a week in early 2023 at The Darling Foundry, a 144-year old former metalworks facility in Montreal now transformed into a 3500m3 contemporary art complex, with a voluminous main room that still maintains its raw architecture of brick, concrete and steel. Colin says “We were using the same live setup as I normally would to amplify—a full PA in the building’s spaces—so we were really able to move the kind of air that I can move—really saturating the room, hitting the walls hard. And then we further fleshed it out.”

Director Jonathan Durand says about the project, “I find that one of the most compelling aspects of Colin’s music is how cinematic it is. If you close your eyes, it can really spark and fuel your imagination. But his performances themselves, If you watch them closely, contain richly evocative, cinematic storytelling – the way his body and instrument almost become fused together, and extended into space. What was exciting about this project wasn’t just to document that process, and see how Derrick Belcham’s lighting design and projections amplified Colin’s playing, but to see how the physical structure of the Darling Foundry itself became another literal extension of Colin’s music.

From Colin Stetson:

My latest album, The love it took to leave you, was recorded live with no overdubs, the sound of the instrument being captured by myriad microphones placed on and around me and the saxophone and throughout the expansive space. And capturing the moment even more fully, each performance in studio was filmed while lights and video were triggered in real time by my microphones – allowing the shape and color and intensity of the light in the room to be a pumping and breathing extension of the music itself.”

The love it took to leave you is a story told through the singular melding of Colin’s breath and body, with a handful of saxophones and clarinet. The album features decades of technical, physical and creative labour between a man and his saxophone. Colin has completely re-contextualized and re-articulated the instrument in passionately expressive and unorthodox ways. Dedicated to an absolute reality of the moment in his solo recordings: one-take, no virtual effects, no overdubbing, he’s developed modes of recording and production that capture and amplify every minute detail of his unique playing style. Entangled with his own physical body, he coaxes songs from his instrument using virtuosic circular breathing techniques that produce polyphonic overtones, creating otherworldly and affective harmonic passages. With an array of microphones and exaggerated sonification, his voice is captured by a dog-collar device on his throat, and the noise and rhythm of the finger keys and pads become enhanced percussive elements—as he stretches the amplification possibilities of the entire horn.

Stetson has collaborated with a number of artists, including Tom Waits, TV on the Radio, Feist, Bon Iver and many more, and best known for his soundtrack work, eg. The Menu, Hereditary, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The love it took to leave you is now available via Envision Records.

Colin Stetson
The love it took to leave you
Tracklisting

Side A
1. The love it took to leave you – 7:45

2. The Six – 6:41

3. The Augur – 3:00

Side B

4. Hollowing – 3:19

5. To think we knew from fear – 3:39

6. Malediction – 9:22

7. Green and grey and fading light – 4:23

Side C

8. Strike your forge and grin – 21:52

Side D

9. Ember – 3:14

10. So say the soaring bullbats – 5:14

11. Bloodrest – 4:37

order The love it took to leave you HERE