London-based musician and multi-disciplinary artist Natasha Khan – aka Bat For Lashes – today shares ‘Letter To My Daughter’, the second single from her upcoming sixth studio album ‘The Dream Of Delphi’, out May 31st via acclaimed label Mercury KX, heralding a new era for the three-time Brit Award and Mercury Prize nominee.
She also shares its video, the second chapter of her album film, produced in collaboration with creative director and choreographer Alexandra Green and directed by Freddie Leyden.
‘Letter To My Daughter’ opens with polyphonic electronic synths inspired by 70s science documentaries and archival footage of early experimental electronic machines. These synths underpin a stunning and introspective vocal performance from Natasha, finally building to a climax of lush, cinematic strings.
Natasha says on the track: “This title is pretty self-explanatory. If I was on my deathbed, it’s what I’d say to Delphi to give her some sense of being at home in the world, the galaxy, the universe we live in. Before Delphi was born I started writing her a book of letters, inspired by Maya Angelou’s book of the same name, Letter To My Daughter. It documents a very strange but magical year, full of special memories and historic worldly moments. This ride of life is always continuing and we’re all just energy moving from one form into another, always. She’s also just part of an echo, ancestral line or spiral in the cosmos, like the spiral that I saw in her soft hair when she was a baby. She is part of something much greater than any of us individually; she comes from the past and she comes from the future.”
Check out ‘Letter To My Daughter’ – BELOW:
Natasha became pregnant at the start of a new decade, a few months after her last album, 2019’s Lost Girls, was released. “I was writing letters to Delphi from the time she was the size of a tomato seed. About everything that was happening in the world, like the riots after George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement, about the pandemic and COVID, about the world that she was going to be born into.” She knew straight away that she wanted to call her daughter Delphi Josephine: her child’s first name is connected to a Greek female oracle, and her second is after Natasha’s mother. “I almost felt a strange sense of protection because I was harbouring a new life,” she says of that peculiar, frightening time. “It gave me hope that something good was going to come out of it. I also had this person to talk to.”
Whenever she could and was allowed to by lockdowns, Natasha would steal out in her mask to her studio (64 Sound, in Highland Park, East LA) and to her engineer Tyler Karmen’s house to write in feverish bursts. Sitting down at the piano or harmonium or setting up loops on Prophet or Juno synthesisers, Natasha simply let herself loose. Many of the first takes of these experiments are included as they were originally done.
The Dream Of Delphi Tracklist:
1. The Dream Of Delphi
2. Christmas Day
3. Letter To My Daughter
4. At Your Feet
5. The Midwives Have Left
6. Home
7. Breaking Up
8. Delphi Dancing
9. Her First Morning
10. Waking Up
11. The Dream of Delphi (Bonus Extended Strings Version)
Bat For Lashes Tour Dates:
12-Jun O2 Academy 2, Oxford UK
18-Jun Town Hall, Birmingham, UK
19-Jun Beacon, Bristol, UK
24-Jun Barbican, London, UK
25-Jun Bexhill De La Warr Pavillion, UK
27-Jun Aviva Studios, Manchester, UK
6-Jul Beauregard Festival, France
29-Jun Siren’s Call Festival, Luxembourg
18-Jul Colours of Ostrava, Czech Republic
23-Aug Edinburgh International Festival, UK
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