Record Store Day: High Fidelity – Cate Le Bon

It’s Record Store Day! It’s finally here! As music fans all over the world head to their local store to get their hands on some special edition purchases, we catch up with Cate Le Bon to find out about three records that changed her view of music.

Cate releases a special split 7″ single with Gruff Rhys featuring the tracks ‘Time Could Change Your Mind’ by Cate Le Bon and ‘Gold Medal Winner’ by Gruff Rhys, out today on Rhys’ Ovni (Turnstile) label.

Selda – Selda

It was whilst touring with Gruff Rhys on his Candylion tour in 2007 that I first heard the formidable sounds of Selda. Record collector extraordinaire, Andy Votel, was on board spinning tunes every night and amongst them was the incredible Ince Ince by the virile Turkish chanteusse. I had not heard much that had excited me for a long while but if the pay off of the drought was Selda then the thirst had been more than worth it. Her sound was infectious, exciting and alarming and at that moment in my life it was the greatest thing I had ever heard and all I wanted to listen to. It was total, blissful satisfaction. It illuminated just how I lazy and despondent I had become in my pursuit of new music. Together, Votel and Selda reignited my passion for the hunt and led me to new pastures of music that I have foraged on relentlessly since.

Syd Barrett– Barrett

It was almost accidentally that I fell upon Barrett by the Late and great Syd Barrett. The thought of having not ventured upon it makes me feel quite unsettled. During a spat of weekly journeys from South to North Wales armed with a limited number of cassettes it became apparent that there was only a certain number of times one could listen to Pipes Of Peace and Thriller on rotation before turning violent. We stopped in Porthmadog at the famous Cob Records and whilst I was winding down in the car park my boyfriend ran in and grabbed the only cassettes that they had. We listened to the ones we were more familiar with; Syd Barrett was always overlooked in favour of cassettes we could sing along to. When we’d exhausted everyone else, Syd was finally pushed into the Blaupunkt. Initially, it made no sense to me at all. It was like hearing a different musical dialect that I could not decipher, but I was strangely compelled to return to the record and persevere. I will be forever thankful that I did not own an MP3 player. I would have almost definitely been impatiently flicking towards something that was easier on the brain at this point. So we battled it out on the A470 , me and Syd and every time I listened I’d hear something new. I started looking forward to car journeys knowing that I was getting closer to assembling the songs out of the cacophony. What I first mistook as a jumbled raucousness was a fragility that at some points would come so close to falling apart but would always manage to hold on by a thread. I have been reluctant to own an Mp3 player since my love affair with Barrett frightened that impatience will lead to me to miss out on a musical masterpiece.

Pavement – Brighten The Corners

At the tender age of 13, my dear father sat me down and told me he had a new CD to play me. I was just starting to get into bands, or rather, I was starting to get into the groups that the boys I’d taken a shine to in school were into. It was a dire roster of shocking, cock-rocking bands. My poor dad, who had raised me on the good stuff, was mortified, and rightly so. It was time for him to gently intervene. I had decided that whatever he played me I would hate hard out but in the face of Pavement’s Brighten The Corners my teenage stubbornness lasted only seconds. I was immediately enthralled with the wonky guitar solos and Malcamus’ cool delivery. The song structures were like nothing I’d heard before, but I liked that there was no telling where they’d meander because they would insist on you coming with. It was the first time I became obsessed with a record without knowing a thing about the makers and without the affirmation of my peers. It is the first record that I truly fell in love with and am still very much in love with it now. Job well done Jono.

Cate Le Bon will play the following dates in support of her album Cryk, out on 30 April through Turnstyle and play the following dates in April.

23 April – London, Village Underground (Album launch party) – SOLD OUT
24 April – Manchester, Soup Kitchen
25 April – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s (Communion night)
26 April – Sheffield, Harley
28 April – Cardiff, The Printhaus