Bat For Lashes

...Heaven
is a feeling I get in
your arms...

Imagine the combined voices of Bjork and Tori Amos trapped in the body of Lilly Allen and you’re halfway into the world of Bat For Lashes.

Brighton based Natasha Khan, who is Bat for Lashes, matches all three of these contemporaries on eccentricity.

Her journey into music apparently began whilst working as a nursery school teacher, when, in a dream she had a visitation from a black horse. The horse, on arriving at her window ledge, escorted her away into the night.
The resulting song ‘Horse and I’ is the opening track on her debut album entitled ‘Fur and Gold’.


Bat For Lashes’ live shows, with 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. Natasha immerses herself in a dreamlike world on stage characterising herself somewhere between a feral forest creature and a child playing dress up. Covered in war paint and sporting an Indian headdress it comes as no surprise that she was a performance artist before turning her hand to music.

Her debut single, ‘The Wizard / I Saw A Light’, was self released in May as a 7” and instantly sold out. The song itself comes across like a sweeping post modern version of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, all electronic resonance and otherworldly whispered vocals.

Bat For Lashes create an evocative and enchanted nocturnal realm transporting you into a world mid way between sleeping and waking. Recurrent themes of natural forces and animal kingdoms, rugged English cliff tops and engulfing oceans are juxtaposed by the energy of rough urban living and teenage bedrooms.

Natasha describes her music as “like a gun that fires wolves” and cites ‘weather phenomena’ and ‘childhood Halloween parties’ as among her greatest influences.

For more details you can visit the Bat For Lashes website:

www.batforlashes.co.uk

MP3: Bat For Lashes - The Wizard

MP3: Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do?

Video: Bat For Lashes - Prescilla