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U.K. ARTIST, CRITICAL PRESS DARLING & MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE NOMINEE BAT FOR LASHES TO RELEASE DEBUT ALBUM FUR AND GOLD IN CANADA ON AUGUST 28, 2007
“there’s something unique on this debut. Her voice floats over electronics, handclaps, piano and autoharp, while her mystically-shaped lyrics feature weeping seals and ghostly horses… otherworldly” – Q
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Fur And Gold (Parlophone/EMI) is the debut album from Bat For Lashes, the nom de plume of singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan. Born in 1979, she still manages to effortlessly combine influences that span decades. Natasha’s work dwells in the elemental, emerging in timeless forms.
Her debut UK single, The Wizard / I Saw A Light, was released in May of this year via the Drowned In Sound Digital Singles Club and as a 7” on Natasha’s own imprint, “She Bear Records.” It instantly sold out, due in part to her captivating performance at the All Tomorrows Parties Festival. Bat For Lashes was invited to play the festival by Devendra Banhart; wherein she managed “to transform the room into witching hour in a small central European forest” (NME), and becoming the unexpected hit of the weekend.
Bjork personally requested Bat For Lashes to support her at the Rock En Seine festival in Paris this August (“I saw Bat For Lashes in England; she was amazing” –Bjork, Urb Magazine) and Thom Yorke has gone on record with some seldom doled out praise: "Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes ain't scared. I love the harpsichord and the sexual ghost voices and bowed saws.”
Little wonder she’s had such an impact. Bat For Lashes’ music is bold and vivid. Her live shows, with her all girl group of accomplices Ginger Lee and Abi Fry,are made up of thunderous marching band drums, desert guitar, ballet school piano, harpsichord, sub-bass snarls, hand-claps and naive beats.
There are also interludes of exquisite heartbreak – the piano ballad Sad Eyes has on more than one occasion left audience members in tears.
It was whilst working as a nursery school teacher, following her university degree in film and music, that the album opener Horse & I came to Natasha in a dream. Inspired by tales of Joan of Arc, Natasha is woken by a black horse at the window and sent on a fateful quest… This extraordinary dream became the muse for the songs that now comprise Fur And Gold – out in Canada on August 28.
Recorded in London and Brighton, Natasha co-produced the album with David Kosten (Faultline). Recurrent themes of natural forces and animal kingdoms, rugged English cliff tops and engulfing oceans – are juxtaposed by the energy of rough urban living, teenage bedrooms and the freedom of California highways. Having spent parts of her childhood in Pakistan, Natasha Khan now lives by the sea in England.
Bat For Lashes was just nominated for the U.K. prestigious and often career cementing, Mercury Music Prize. She shortlists along side the likes of label-mate Jamie T., and other musical heavy hitters; Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys and The Klaxons. The winner will be revealed on September 4 in the U.K.
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“a neverending story of fantastic dreams and heartbreaking reality… the chapters unfold with a sense of wonder and slow, powerfully evoked drama…Bat For Lashes inhabit a magical kingdom you won’t want to leave” 5/5 - The Guardian
“Bat For Lashes has clearly and equivocally her own voice… entrancing. One of the year’s most exciting debuts” - Music Week
“reinventing Siouxsie/Kate Bush/Bjork mystical sex, musical travelogue and poetic dreamstate for the contemporary singer-songwriter milieu. The results are nothing short of breathtaking” 4/5 - Observer Music Monthly
“a divinely phantasmagoric affair packed with elemental images both beauteous and beastly… to listen to Bat For Lashes is to be pulled into some exotic otherworld – a place sometimes dark and disturbing, at others sweetly exultant. Expect magic”
- Time Out
www.batforlashes.co.uk
www.myspace.com/batforlashes
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