Bat For Lashes

Rote Fabrik - Zurich:
www.rotefabrik.ch

Tickets:
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Bat For Lashes is the work of British singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan. Born in 1979, yet combining influences that span decades, Natasha’s work dwells in the elemental, emerging in timeless forms.
 
Bat For Lashes’ music is bold and vivid. Her live shows, with accomplices Ginger Lee, Abi Fry and Lizzy Carey, are made up of thunderous marching band drums, desert guitar, ballet school piano, harpsichord, sub-bass snarls, hand-claps and naive beats, with the women fluidly switching and swapping their instruments between songs. There are also interludes of exquisite heartbreak; the piano ballad “Sad Eyes” has on more than one occasion left audience members in tears. Her debut album Fur and Gold is a very special record, a cohesive collection of songs so haunting and mesmerizing it makes a striking impression on all who hear it.
 
It was whilst working as a nursery school teacher, following her university degree in film and music, that Fur and Gold 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.
 
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 – highlighted on the lament “Seal Jubilee”, are juxtaposed by the energy of rough urban living, teenage bedrooms and the freedom of California highways. Josh T Pearson (Lift To Experience) guests, adding guitar and vocals on three tracks – the brooding live favorite “Trophy”, “Seal Jubilee” and the finale “I Saw A Light”, adding the kind of hymns and chaos that only the son of a preacher could provide.
 
Bat For Lashes played her first big show in London supporting CocoRosie at the Scala at the end of 2005. A year later almost to the day, Bat For Lashes headlined a sold out Scala, where the likes of Bjork, Nellee Hooper and Brett Anderson were to be seen in the sold out crowd.  Other fans include Devendra Banhart, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke (who chose “Horse & I” for his iTunes Top Ten Playlist, saying “I love the harpsichord and the sexual ghost voices and bowed saws. This song seems to come from the world of Grimm's fairytales, and I feel like a wolf.")
 
With the word-of-mouth spreading on her live shows in the UK and the album garnering rave reviews from the likes of The Guardian, Mojo, Dazed & Confused and The Times, Bat For Lashes introduction to the US came at 2007’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Gracing several stages over the course of four days Bat For Lashes made an indelible impression on all who witnessed her. Her live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” providing the most spine tingling moment of the week.
 
She was barely on the plane home before the Stateside excitement began, the video she had made for “Prescilla” - filmed at the actual bat cave from the Adam West TV version of Batman in Los Angeles by Andy Bruntel – started cropping up on music and video websites across the country.
 
Having spent parts of her childhood in Pakistan, Natasha Khan now lives by the sea in England, where she regularly follows her dreams.


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