"The album is delicate and sweet but live, it tends to be pretty loud and insane. Or not," says Cibelle (pronounced "See-bell-ee").

"It depends on the day and on the band. With this band, I don't know what it sounds like yet."

As charming and otherworldly in person as she is on record, the young Brazilian singer is finally beginning to earn a profile in the UK to match the success she already enjoys in Europe and US.

Although accessible enough to potentially emulate the sales figures of label-mate Bebel Gilberto, her music is an infinitely more inventive fusion of traditional South American styles and cutting-edge electronica. It's an adventurous spirit which she carries over to her gigs.

"It's as if I'm unable to leave it the same because I have the attention span of a flea, so I end up improvising. My band changes a lot as well. I like having people in my band who are artists in their own right, who have projects of their own. So it's a bit like Cibelle and the available'," she says. "Obviously, with all of them knowing the album, we use the songs like a line you dance around."

The album in question is The Shine Of Dried Electric Leaves, which features duets with Seu Jorge, best known for his work on the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and Devendra Banhart.

"I was invited to do a TV show with Devendra in France. It was a concert in the middle of the street. We spent the whole day singing to each other before we started talking to each other properly," she says.

"I find it really boring to write things on my own. But I like writing with friends when you record it at the same time, so it's like taking a Polaroid of what's happening inside of me and the people I'm collaborating with at that moment."

Working with Cibelle involves being introduced to her two main sources of inspiration - what she terms "head-breaking" and "waltzing".

"We bring along records we like and listen to them in a random order. It doesn't make any sense but it just takes you to some sort of beautiful point where you feel inspired enough to stop listening and start recording stuff," she says of the former.

"You do waltzing with two people. I go into one booth and my friend goes into another and I don't tell my friend what I'm going to sing about and my friend doesn't tell me what he or she is going to play.

"We start waltzing. I follow my friend, my friend follows me again and we make a big block of sound."

She relocated to the UK to mix her eponymous debut in 2003 and now has a parallel career as a DJ here, playing out exotica in London clubs.

"I used to scream a lot when I was DJing, so for a while I wasn't doing it so much because I was damaging my voice and I had to go on tour," she laughs. "But now I've learned not to scream and just to stand on the microphone and talk b******s to people instead. It's a lot of fun."

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