Image credit: Cate Le Bon
Cate Le Bon presents “Remembering Me,” the final pre-release single/video out in advance of her highly anticipated album, Pompeii, out February 4th on Mexican Summer. Following the release of “Moderation” and “Running Away,” “Remembering Me” exists in Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now that miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. “In the classical rewrite / I wore the heat like / A hundred birthday cakes / Under one sun,” Le Bon sings, reflecting her own creative process of eloquently expressing reconstituted meltdowns. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slipping away from meaning. “‘Remembering Me’ is a neurotic diary entry that questions notions of legacy and warped sentimentalism in the desperate need to self-mythologise,” says Le Bon. The accompanying video, directed by Juliana Giraffe and Nicola Giraffe of Giraffe Studios and featuring costumes by Monica Adriana Rowlands, is sparse and colorful, celebrating Le Bon’s artistry.
Pompeii is Le Bon’s sixth studio album, and the follow-up to 2019’s Reward. To leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Written primarily on bass, Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.
UPCOMING LIVE DATES
Tue. March 15 – London, UK @ Hackney Empire
Tue. March 15 – London, UK @ Hackney Empire
Wed. March 16 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
Thu. March 17 – Glasgow, UK @ Queen Margaret Union
Fri. March 18 – Belfast, IE @ Empire Music Hall
Sat. March 19 – Dublin, IE @ The National Concert Hall
Mon. March 21 – Liverpool, UK @ Arts Club
Tue. March 22 – Leeds, UK @ Irish Centre
Wed. March 23 – Birmingham, UK @ The Mill
Mon. March 28 – Lille, FR @ L’Aeronef
Tue. March 29 – Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie
Thu. March 31 – Lyon, FR @ Epicerie Moderne
Fri. April 1 – Zurich, CH @ Bogen F
Sat. April 2 – Schorndorf, DE @ Manufaktur
Sun. April 3 – Leipzig, DE @ UT Connewitz
Tue. April 5 – Berlin, DE @ Frannz Club
Wed. April 6 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher
Thu. April 7 – Hus 7 / Slaktkyrkan @ Stockholm, SE
Fri. April 8 – Oslo, NO @ Parkteatre
Sat. April 9 – Copenhagen, DK @ Small Vega
Mon. April 11 – Brussels, BE @ AB Box
Tue. April 12 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
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