PUSHing boundaries is not a new thing for Colette. From leading the troupe of SuperJane female DJs to adding singing live while spinning, Colette is defintiely a trendsetter in the world of electronic dance music. While her last artist album Hypnotized featured a lot of downtempo tracks, her new CD Push is a lot more aggressive with an exhilarating electro feel. Check out Colette when she comes to your town, whether it's a show with her live band or a DJ gig, she definitely delivers.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: I bet you're excited about your new album, Push, coming out.
Colette: Yes, I was really, really happy when it finally came out, it's great.
RS: With this new CD, several people have compared you to Madonna.
Colette: I've read a couple of those things and that's really not a
bad thing. I love her.
RS: So you are doing a live tour with this and you're practicing
with a band.
Colette: Yes, we recently had our first performance with the band,
an in-store at Virgin Records and it was great. It was really fun and
it was a really nice show to have for the first time playing together.
RS: How is it different performing with a band versus doing your
DJ, with singing as with records?
Colette: I really enjoy doing both kinds of performance but there is
a huge difference. Being able to make music with three other people
on the stage with you is just such a different energy than being alone
and playing records. It's made me really appreciate performing a lot
more. I'm nervous and excited but I don't know the best way to
describe it. Having to focus your energy on so many people instead of
just looking at turntables is very different.
RS: Dance music seems to have a stigma where it's just DJs
playing records, what effect do you think playing live with a band
will have to fight that stereotype?
Colette: What's nice about having the band is that people can see
that this music is made live. There are so many people behind house
music in general that you never get to see it because it's printed on
a CD or on a record. The guys that are in my band, I've been making
music with them for eight years, so to have them on stage playing live
what they play in the studio for me is really great. It hopefully
opens people up to how much goes into this genre.
RS: Very cool. So with this new album you worked with several
different producers. How do you normally work on music - do you start
with the lyric or do you write to a track, how do most of your songs
come about?
Colette: Usually I start with tracks. I've worked with some of the
producers for a long time and then there were a few new people on this
album. They would send me barebones instrumentals because I want
something that I can all build on. Then I write lyrics and melodies
or sometimes I sit with other writers and we write the song and then
it's like building blocks, just building the song up from there.
RS: I notice this album, there seems to be a more aggressive
kind of electro feel to it. Was that sort of preplanned or where did
that come from?
Colette: Well I definitely wanted to make music that I could really
perform in a club. For the past nine years I've been performing mainly
in nightclubs and on my last record I made a lot of down-tempo tracks.
I'm a huge fan of downtempo but I couldn't really perform the songs
anywhere. So I was limited to the songs that I could do out and I
wanted to make sure that didn't happen with this record, that I'd be
able to perform a lot of them in my live show.
