Name: COLLIGNON
Members: Yves Lennertz (guitar, bass), Gino Bombrini (drums, percussion), Jori Collignon (keyboards, production)
Interviewee: Jori Collignon
Nationality: Dutch
Recent release: COLLIGNON's sophomore full-length album Bicicleta is out February 14th 2025 via Gris Gris. Catch them live on tour at one of the following dates:



Recommendations on the topic of sound: I really liked How Music Dies (Or Lives) and Silenced by Sound by Ian Brennan.

If you enjoyed this COLLIGNON interview and would like to know more about the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and bandcamp.  

For a deeper dive, read the thoughts of Yves' former bandmates in our YĪN YĪN interview.
 


When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

What happens in my body while I listen to music depends a lot on the circumstances. Colours, objects and shapes are all familiar. Sometimes my mind paints pictures or scenes like in a movie, or I see landscapes.

I enjoy listening with my eyes open and closed. I love to hold a vinyl-sleeve and stare at the artwork while I’m listening. I spend a lot of time with my fathers record collection like that when I was younger.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

With headphones I can be fully emerged with the music and disconnect from the outside world. Really nice from time to time. But also I love the idea that music is almost never just a thing by itself. In reality it’s always part of a broader scene. A lot of the time music connects and communicates and makes you want to be there.

The environment can make me appreciate music more than anything else. Salsa needs dancers in a club in Cali, if there is flamenco music, I want to feel the fire of the dancers interacting with the musicians, I want to hear the roulèr playing a maloya beat echoing over the mountains on La Reunion Island, I want to hear fado in a smokey bar, drinking wine.

Besides headphones and stereo systems, hearing acoustic music might be the most wonderful thing.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

It’s cool when music takes you to a place that no longer exists, like blues music from the 20s or Duke Ellington records from the 30s.

Lately I’m back into seventies music, Ry Cooder, Steely Dan, Little Feet, The Band.

Sounds like freedom somehow from where we are now.



Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

The other day I was suddenly completely intrigued by the voice of Karen Carpenter.

The music is sweet as candy but there is a dark depth in her voice that gave me tears and goosebumps as she sang about the end of the world.



Skeeter Davis’ version might hit me even harder.



Ah yes and a while ago we say a concert by Soweto group BCUC and we couldn’t stop dancing, it was like an out-of-body experience.

[Read our BCUC interview]

There is no recipe here, any other day I could have a totally different response. It’s a coming-together of the right elements at the right moment and being open to it.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I hate music in shopping malls or large stores. Empty pop sounds produced to keep the zombies shopping happily, it makes me physically unwell.

Sounds I can hear for hours are mostly organic, slightly unpredictable, like birdsong or the sound of the ocean. Or Brian Eno.



Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I guess as a musician you always pay special attention towards sounds from the environment.

When I was on tour or travelling I always used to bring a portable recorder to take ‘sound-pictures’ of places I would visit. Chaotic Indian roads or Russian churches, people outside a Brazilian neighbourhood by the ocean at the end of the afternoon.

I would then mix these sounds into the tracks I’d be working on in the studio. Very softly in the background, but it would make the work a lot more pleasant.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

It seems to me a lot of architects overlook how their buildings sound and you can come across the most crazy reverberations sometimes.

A wile ago ago I was in this huge empty water reservoir with a 30 second reverb. It’s a playful thing, right? The characteristics just ask you to scream, clap and interact, it’s fun.

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

My studio and smaller venues.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. It depends if I’m listening or writing, or playing, or recording, or mixing.

The crazy thing with music is that it’s just abstract vibrations that can affect us so deeply, so directly. Thoughts conceptualise abstractions for us to be able to deal with everything that arises each moment.

So yeah, sometimes I search for a more ‘blue’ sound or a ‘dusty dry earth’ feeling to make the sound fit the track. It’s a bit like painting landscapes for me.


COLLIGNON Interview Image (c) the artists

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

It’s very important and often under-appreciated and overlooked. There is a lot of sound pollution and a lot of people don’t even care or notice. Speak to anybody in Lisbon living next to the airport about what that does to your well-being.

At the same time, vibrant cities should be loud and chaotic and alive. Don’t buy an expensive house next to an old classic music venue and then start complaining about the sound.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

Bird sounds are the one for me. I once read somewhere that comforting bird sounds have an evolutionary aspect because hearing birds used to mean we were in a safe environment. I also read this is hard to prove :)

Wind and thunder are also great. Like planet Earth playing the largest pipe-organ.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

Yes it’s a nice thing.

The moment I read this question, our cat jumps on my desk and tells me she wants to go outside, so I open the door of our living room and we walk to the front door together. She goes out and I wish her a nice poo.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

Yeah. I also had my portion of loud music and suffer the consequences.

When visiting shows I’m wearing personalised ear protection now and I can recommend it to everybody. They have this linear frequency protection and the music sounds amazing.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I love silence.

It’s a bit like space: if there is none, I have nowhere to go.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

It amazes me blind people can find their way through a crowded city following the reflections of the sound of their stick. I think I’d be dead in 10 minutes.

Then other creatures are completely focussed on smell, or see different color spectrums, and who knows what image of the world insects get from their antennae.

I guess realising the relativity of our senses with an understanding of how profoundly they shape our world view is something that could give us some insight on the complexity and diversity of the world. Playing with that gives us flexibility and creativity.