At the beginning of every winter, Melbourne does something quietly radical, leaning into the sharp cold by throwing open its theatres, laneways and concert venues and daring you to feel it. While other cities bunker down for the colder months, Melbourne plays in a league of its own. RISING, the city-wide festival of new art, performance and music, runs across twelve nights, featuring over 300 artists and 65 events stretching throughout the city. It pulls together the experimental and the electric, the intimate and the immeasurable, bringing acts from all corners of the globe spanning indie, electronic, folk and experimental sounds, alongside visual art, performance and experiences that resist any category at all. Something for everyone to devour.

Among this year's most anticipated names is Cate Le Bon. The Welsh musician, songwriter and producer who has spent nearly two decades making work that feels entirely at home in a program like this, familiar and strange in equal measure, impossible to file neatly away. With the Mercury Prize-nominated Reward, the sensuous Pompeii, and her most recent record Michelangelo Dying behind her, she arrives in Melbourne as one of RISING's most compelling propositions. We caught up with her ahead of the show.

Across a catalogue that spans shifting genres and evolving collaborations, her music resists resolution. It moves instead through texture and tone, through fragmented imagery and emotional states that feel deliberately

Growing up in rural Carmarthenshire and having lived across Wales, Los Angeles and the California desert since, a sense of home, or its absence, runs quietly through everything Cate Le Bon makes. She's the first to admit she can't always locate its exact influence.

You grew up in Wales and have lived in various places since. How much does a sense of home, or the absence of it, find its way into who you are and what you make?

Wales is a very important part of my identity, which I become increasingly aware of the further afield I go. But I can't really pinpoint how it shapes the within and without of what I make. It undoubtedly does, but how might be glaringly obvious to you while remaining a mystery to me.

You've cultivated a very distinct artistic voice over time. What has shaped that perspective most, and how do you continue to challenge it?

I try not to be retrospective. I see making an album as shedding something, and so it feels good to try and annihilate identity as much as possible when moving into a new piece of work. I like things to be in motion for as long as possible, and I like it when things go wrong.

When you listen back to older records now, what do you hear: growth, distance, something else entirely?

I don't ever listen back. I really don't see the purpose.

That forward momentum carries into how she approaches the stage. Her live shows have a reputation for being transportive, and she's quick to credit the people she shares it with.

Your music often sits in a slightly surreal space. How do you translate that atmosphere into a live show?

I have an exceptional band, which goes a long way. Many of them were involved in the making of the album and they are all emotionally intuitive players. We come together before the show and try to share a similar headspace. I trust them completely and allow myself to be led by them and the music.

Your performances feel carefully constructed. How do you balance that precision with the unpredictability of a festival audience?

They are to an extent, but my favourite thing about playing live is how the energy transfer between myself, the band and the audience can change a performance in surprising ways. We will never all be in that space again sharing that moment, so that back and forth is unique and I love to tap into it. This is why I hate phones at a show. There are so few moments of collective joy that to all be present and connected in a moment feels like a rare and magical thing. Phones get in between and break it all down.

There is a strong visual and sonic language in your work. How important is staging and environment when performing within a multi-arts program?

I'm very sensitive to the environment when performing, which is both good and bad. I like low lighting. Smoke. A feeling of being inside a TV screen on stage. I don't like it when an atmosphere breaks. I lose my mind. Then we're back to phones.

RISING brings together music and broader art forms. What draws you to spaces that allow for that kind of cross-disciplinary exchange?

It's a fluid atmosphere when an audience is inspired and cracked open by different experiences that start to inform one another. Eyes and ears and brains all fed. Makes for a nice time.

Many people may be encountering your work for the first time at a festival. Does that change how you approach a set?

I don't think so. I try to remember that I'm there to perform, not so much to entertain. I'll win some, I'll lose some.

Away from the stage and the studio, Le Bon's world gets considerably quieter, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

How do you spend your time when you're not making music or on the road?

I love my dog Mila. I love, love, love her. I spend days marvelling at her ears, her existence, and the miracle that we have found each other on this massive planet. It's a slow, peaceful time.

What has been your biggest inspiration for your music this year?

I don't know yet what exactly I've absorbed and how it will exit, but I'm feeling almost ready to start finding out.

As she arrives in Melbourne for RISING, she brings with her not just a catalogue of records, but an ongoing refusal to stand still long enough to be defined by them. 

Cate Le Bon performs at RISING in the Melbourne Town Hall on June 3rd. Tickets for RISING are available now via the official RISING website. With limited capacity across many events, early booking is recommended.