Welsh multi-disciplinary artist and producer Cate Le Bon’s work has long defied categorization—an architect of sound who builds emotional landscapes from abstraction, texture, and tone.
Over six albums, including the Mercury Prize-nominated Reward and the critically acclaimed Pompeii, she has honed a singular voice: part surrealist, part sculptor, always attuned to the emotional undercurrents that shape her art. Her production credits—spanning Wilco’s Cousin, Horsegirl’s Phonetics On and On, and St. Vincent’s Grammy-winning All Born Screaming—reflect a deep trust in her ability to transform sonic environments into intimate, idiosyncratic worlds.
Born in rural Carmarthenshire, Wales, and now based in Cardiff, Le Bon’s creative path has been shaped by both solitude and collaboration. Her longstanding partnerships with co-producer Samur Khouja and saxophonist Euan Hinshelwood have become integral to her evolving sound—a blend of analog warmth, filtered vocals, and sculptural arrangements that feel both alien and deeply human.
Her seventh album, Michelangelo Dying, emerges from a place of raw emotion and reluctant vulnerability. A vivid grieving of a fantasy, the album is a shimmering song cycle that picks at wounds even as it tries to preserve them—an iridescent, layered meditation on love, loss, and the unknowable self.
With a moving guest collaboration with John Cale and a sonic palette that folds guitars, saxophones, and synths into something both intimate and expansive, Le Bon once again invites us into a world where feeling overrides form, and abstraction becomes its own kind of truth.
