That hunger has again paid off for the gutsy singer and songwriter, known to her fans as Bat For Lashes. Fresh from a whirlwind support slot on the Radiohead tour, Khan is following up her widelyacclaimed 2007 release Fur & Gold with her evocative new album Two Suns. With shimmering vocals set amidst a symphony of startling sonics, Khan has crafted an album that is both grand in design and intimate in effect. Two Suns recalls groundbreaking records by visionaries like Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush but, at its core, it’s a powerfully personal statement in song.
During a recent press appearance in New York City, Khan sat down with me to talk about the new album, and her continued quest for a sound all her own.
There’s a real humility in this album. These songs sound like they needed to be sung, like they’re journal entries.With this record especially, I really hid myself away. I was going through my own thing of trying to have a bit of a life after touring the last album. The record company was hardly involved at all, right up until the end.
How did you get them to stay hands-off?Well, I think I just didn’t invite them to the studio! [Laughs.] I also recorded a lot of the album all over. I was documenting it as I was traveling. And living in New York was good, because the British record label people couldn’t come and hear what I was doing. And then doing a bit in L.A., and then doing some in Wales, and people don’t want to get on a train and go to the middle of nowhere. So luckily, I managed to avoid them until I grabbed everything together. I think they tried to email me comments, but I told my manager that I didn’t want to read them!
There was a song on your first album where you went into the rain while recording to capture a particular effect — and that kind of sonic stamp shines through on the new one as well. It sounds like it’s a priority to you to capture things naturally.I use layers of sound, but a lot of the performances, the bones of the songs, I try to capture within a sort of visual space. There are certain records that suit sounding like they’re in a vacuum. There’s a kind of rich claustrophobia about that. It’s kind of allencompassing. But for me, because this album has themes about cosmos, nature, and different landscapes — traveling and journeys and movement — it’s really important for me to capture an expansiveness in the sound. And even if you’re recording the sound of a room, a cathedral, or just a silent space, it gives a location to the songs which then fits into my more cinematic view of music.
Musically, I’m very visual, and when I’m writing a song, it’s set in a space — I’m in a car driving down a desert road, or I’m in the city at night stalking the alleyways, or whatever. Even if it’s a piano ballad, I’m imagining Tom Waits in an old bar.
Like on “Siren Song.”I sung that outside, on a mountain in Wales. With all the trees, you can hear shhhhhh — loads of forests all around me, just swaying.
What was your template for those kinds of sounds? “Pearl’s Dream,” for instance, sounds like a combination of old school and new school — like an old Roland drum machine mixed with shimmering synth textures that sound very modern. Were there things you were listening to coming up as a musician that gave you such a wideopen approach?I’m always listening to an amalgamation of artists, and I generally feel a resonance with something they’re doing, but I don’t think it should stop there. I’m not going to listen to Herbie Hancock and then say, “Alright, I’m gonna write a jazz record!” I listen to Herbie Hancock and I hear his Moog synth or whatever, and I just think how much I like it. Or I’ll listen to Scott Walker and pick out the reverb on his vocal. I listen to a lot of things, but when I’m in the studio, I’m not listening to other people’s music.
I’d spent a lot of time in the city, then in the desert, then by the sea when I was in Wales — and then I was living in Brooklyn, hearing TV On The Radio and Yeasayer, all these cool bands that are coming up. Then I’d go home and listen to Peter Gabriel and be like, “I see the connection to his So album, or all the African percussion he was using.” I suppose I was trying to sonically knit together all of my experiences and make sense of them. Because on an emotional level, when I was making this album, I had come out of being a teacher, and living with my boyfriend, and being very domestic. Then suddenly, I was catapulted all over the world and I felt quite rootless, and a bit lost.
To deal with that, you develop this extended family of friends you know in different places that mean something to you. It’s almost like all of the sounds sonically represent different characters, places, and people that I was trying to make into a conducive whole. I was trying to make something that binds it all together and makes sense to me. That’s why there’s such an eclectic use of sound on my album — because I’m a music lover that loves everything.
Recording Rituals
“I write the majority of my songs on a Yamaha QY100 sequencer,” Khan tells me. “Like on my song ‘Daniel.’ A lot of the bass lines and all of the choir sounds that come in during the chorus are on that machine. It has around 2,000 sounds that I mess around with.”
For recording, Khan prefers Steinberg Cubase. “Cubase is what I learned,” she continues. “I use an AKG C1000 mic for my vocals. A lot of times, we end up using the original vocal tracks I record. We did that on ‘Daniel,’ and on ‘Big Love’ as well.”
Khan used a variety of vintage and modern gear while recording Two Suns. “We used a [Sequential Circuits] Prophet-5, as well as modular synths for the bass — super old-school kind of Kraftwerk-y sounds. We also used a Nord Electro 2 on one track, for Rhodes sounds. My Nord has a really cool replica Rhodes with a great bass.”