Feb 13, 2026 · 1 hr 45 min · 13 segments
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the debut Bat for Lashes album, Fur and Gold, we take a detailed look at how it was made. Natasha Khan had grown up in Hertfordshire, England and studied art…
Natasha KhanGuest
David KostenGuest
Dan NordheimHostYeah.
Obviously the original demos were all done at home by me with Abby Fry on viola and Caroline Weeks adding some backing vocals, guitars and you know we were kind of as a group of girls in the sort of initial band we were playing out those songs for a while before I even got the deal.
And at home I'd done a load of kind of preemptive demos which didn't make it onto the album, like songs called Howl, Rosie, Carrie, Blood Red Shoes, like these kind of mini CDs that I was making to sell at shows.
And then, yeah, I guess when I wrote, I remember writing what's it got to do on my bedroom floor.
Like I used a little QI70 and I had Logic and some plugins and I remember bashing a boot on my desk and using hand claps and things.
So I had kind of, sonically I had definitely... thought about the world and tried to do it in my own very lo-fi way.
Cause I don't know whether we did any from scratch in Jacobs, but I think most of them had been like the parts, the string parts and things we'd already sort of written with Abby and stuff.
Yeah, I think there were lots of revelatory things for me in working with Natasha.
One was here we had music where all the parts pretty much had been worked out in advance and every single one was perfect.
And although I think we did do some of those tracks from scratch at Jacob's, those demos, there were lots of really good demos that I was played, even in that very first meeting before meeting Natasha, when I was in the office of the publisher.
I remember... being played a demo of I Saw a Light, which essentially was the same thing.
And all we really did together was take it from sounding a bit like a demo to something that sounded like a finished piece.
It must have helped hugely that so many of these artists These songs had parts that had been fleshed out with other musicians and practiced live and played out live.
Because I'd come off the back of working with bands, doing two or three band recordings and a couple of albums with solo singers.
Yeah.
Obviously the original demos were all done at home by me with Abby Fry on viola and Caroline Weeks adding some backing vocals, guitars and you know we were kind of as a group of girls in the sort of initial band we were playing out those songs for a while before I even got the deal.
And at home I'd done a load of kind of preemptive demos which didn't make it onto the album, like songs called Howl, Rosie, Carrie, Blood Red Shoes, like these kind of mini CDs that I was making to sell at shows.
And then, yeah, I guess when I wrote, I remember writing what's it got to do on my bedroom floor.
Like I used a little QI70 and I had Logic and some plugins and I remember bashing a boot on my desk and using hand claps and things.
So I had kind of, sonically I had definitely... thought about the world and tried to do it in my own very lo-fi way.
Cause I don't know whether we did any from scratch in Jacobs, but I think most of them had been like the parts, the string parts and things we'd already sort of written with Abby and stuff.
Yeah, I think there were lots of revelatory things for me in working with Natasha.
One was here we had music where all the parts pretty much had been worked out in advance and every single one was perfect.
And although I think we did do some of those tracks from scratch at Jacob's, those demos, there were lots of really good demos that I was played, even in that very first meeting before meeting Natasha, when I was in the office of the publisher.
I remember... being played a demo of I Saw a Light, which essentially was the same thing.
And all we really did together was take it from sounding a bit like a demo to something that sounded like a finished piece.
It must have helped hugely that so many of these artists These songs had parts that had been fleshed out with other musicians and practiced live and played out live.
Because I'd come off the back of working with bands, doing two or three band recordings and a couple of albums with solo singers.
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