Cate Le Bon Salutes Syd Barrett!

3:05 PM GMT 15/02/2010

CATE LE BON, the wyrd Welsh folkstress whose Me Oh My album so entranced MOJO last year, has been in touch to discuss her involvement in our latest free CD, Syd Barrett covers-fest The Madcap Laughs Again.

"I've been thinking about Syd a lot," reveals Le Bon. "About what an incredibly talented musician he was but also about him as a person. There's a sense of genius about him, that these things he did had to be done. Listening to Barrett and The Madcap Laughs, you know that even if there wasn 't an audience for them they would still exist in some form."

Le Bon - no stranger to Syd's world of lysergic strangeness - stumbled across Barrett in an appropriately retro-technological form.

"I had a car that only had a tape player in it," she recalls. "And my boyfriend had bought a tape copy of [Syd's second solo album] Barrett. It was quite a difficult album to listen to, but I think because it wasn't a CD or an mp3 that you can flick through I had to persist with it. On first hearing I had no idea what was going on but I felt compelled to come back to it."

Le Bon's Feel is a hymnal take on one of Madcap's sketchiest tracks. But the recording, she reports, proved something of a challenge.

"Feel isn't really in any time signature," she explains. "It swings in and out of different rhythms. So I listened to it over and over and after about fifty listens I could kind of sing the melody from memory. My drummer wasn't that familiar with the song. I could see his face when I was playing and singing; he just thought I'd gone insane. But the more he listened to the song, you could see him realising how beautiful it was. Then we put some psychedelic guitar on it. I tried to keep it as 'Syd-y' as possible."

Le Bon took MOJO's call while making a video for Me Oh My's Shoeing The Bones (to be released as a single on March 22). The process involved a naked person, covered in shower gel, shivering in the late January frost. Expect an off-kilter promo from the left-of-field talent.

Catch her on tour in March, alongside recent MOJO Club stars Lawrence Arabia...

Saturday, 27 February - CARDIFF - Clwb Ifor Bach (SWN Tour)
Monday, 1 March - ABERYSTWYTH - Constitution Hall Café (SWN Tour)
Tuesday, 2 March - BANGOR - Bangor (SWN Tour)
Wednesday, 3 March - WREXHAM - Rascals (SWN Tour)

Thursday, 4 March - YORK - City Screen Basement (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Friday, 5 March - NEWCASTLE - Cluny 2 (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Saturday, 6 March - GLASGOW - Stereo (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Monday, 8 March - MANCHESTER - Deaf Institute (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Tuesday, 9 March - SHEFFIELD - Harley (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Wednesday, 10 March - CAMBRIDGE - Portland Arms (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Thursday, 11 March - LONDON - Lexington (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)
Friday, 12 March - BRISTOL - Louisiana (co-headline with Lawrence Arabia)

For more, head over HERE

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 3:05 PM GMT 15/02/2010

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RE: Bridget McClusky
yeah she loves the Happy Mondays.

Posted by sweary stan at 1:31 PM GMT 20/02/2010 Report Abuse

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I'm Brian of Nazareth.

Posted by Brian at 10:58 PM GMT 21/02/2010 Report Abuse

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I am Spartacus!

Posted by Spartacus. at 12:12 AM GMT 22/02/2010 Report Abuse

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RE: Sweary Stan
I'm a proper solid gold class A cunt.

Posted by Sweary Stan at 9:11 AM GMT 22/02/2010 Report Abuse

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