The Dream of Delphi Bat For Lashes

• 1The Dream of Delphi04:42
• 2Christmas Day01:52
• 3Letter To My Daughter02:36
• 4At Your Feet03:45
• 5The Midwives Have Left02:35
• 6Home (Single Version)03:14
• 7Breaking Up02:06
• 8Delphi Dancing02:58
• 9Her First Morning02:32
• 10Waking up04:01
• 11The Dream of Delphi (Bonus Extended Strings Version)06:01
• Total Runtime36:22

Info for The Dream of Delphi

"The Dream Of Delphi" is an ode to motherhood created in LA, Natasha’s second home, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a sonic archive of a time when Natasha birthed her daughter Delphi earth side. The record weaves together ten song poems, documenting the polarity of navigating both an exterior world that was seemingly turning upside down, whilst also experiencing theprofoundly personal and transformational early moments of mothering Delphi, named after the Greek Oracle, the ancient future teller. The music became Natasha’s sanctuary, born out of stolen trips to the studio, where each track was improvised and completed in a few hours and chronologises her diary like offerings over a period of two years; from “TheMidwives Have Left”; to writing a “Letter To My Daughter”; and all the way through to “Waking up”, as well as a cover of her daughter’s favourite song, “Home”.

While the storytelling behind Bat For Lashes’ previous albums have traditionally used otherworldly narratives and female lead characters (e.g. ‘Laura’, ‘Daniel’ and ‘The Bride’), for the first ti me, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is about Natasha’s personal experience of themagical and sometimes melancholy intimacy of early motherhood. This record creates a more private form of mythology around the music than her previous work. ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ touches on more of an instrumental “Bat For Lashes” world, and shows Natasha to be both a confident composer and craftswoman of intimate landscapes. While the music creates a more womb-like, ambient space for the listener, it still leaves ample room for her signature dream pop songwriting to vibrate through. Natasha has worked with Brad Oberhofer, Mary Lattimore and Jack Falby on this record.

Bat For Lashes

Natasha Khan
(born 25 October 1979) is an English songwriter who records as Bat for Lashes. Incredibly photogenic and fashion-minded, Khan is a glamorous figure for the alternative music realm; a seeming star-in-waiting, successor to that mystical/sexual rock-heroine crown. Bat for Lashes' music has been championed by Björk, Radiohead, M.I.A., Kanye West, and Devendra Banhart.

Khan was born to a Pakistani father and an English mother. Her father, Rahmat, is a member of the Khan squash-playing dynasty; her cousin, Jahangir, is the most famous squash-player of all time. Raised in Wembley, then Rickmansworth, but often tripping to Pakistan to visit extended family, Khan’s childhood was split between the two countries, and torn between the two cultures. Describing herself as being “really geeky and sad at school”, Khan spent her days, on either continent, “daydreaming in the garden”, playing with tadpoles, spiders, and dogs, and 'praying to aliens.'

When her parents divorced when she was 12, Khan turned to music, drawing inspiration from Björk and Kate Bush, two artists to whom she has been frequently compared. “Growing up, Bjork and Kate Bush were really important to me,” offers Khan. “I get tired of being compared to them, and I hope that, as time goes on, I’m going to peel away more and more layers of myself to the point where I’ve made something, and become something, that isn’t comparable. But I understand why it happens.

“As a young teenaged girl, I already had a relationship with music, and had already written my own compositions on piano. But until I discovered those artists, it felt like I was missing part of my family. To know your ancestry, to know those who’ve gone before, is hugely important to any budding, young creative people.

“When I first heard [Björk and Kate Bush], I thought: ‘oh, so it’s okay’. I saw how other people had been interested in the same things as me, and had felt as much passion and emotion for sensuality, or spiritual things, or magical, invisible things as I did. Things turned them on the same way they turned me on. It was like getting a pat on the head from an older sister.”

Befitting someone whose art-school dissertation was on “the artist’s preoccupation with childhood and the subconscious” —a thesis in which she spoke of Michel Gondry and Tim Burton— Khan still draws on those days in her songs.

“Nick Cave has that quote that ‘the child invites tragedy into its life in order that its life become a serious matter’, and I think that’s a really fundamental idea to a lot of my work,” she explains. “My music isn’t something I plonk out on a guitar in a quest to be famous. It’s deeply-rooted in the things I need to discuss about my childhood, growing up conflicted between two cultures.” … (Source: www.altmusic.about.com)

This album contains no booklet.