After teasing us with a game of hangman, Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan revealed plans for a new project called Sexwitch, featuring members of TOY. Now, following the group's live debut at Green Man Festival in Wales over the weekend, they've shared details about an upcoming debut album.
The self-titled effort is due out on September 25 through Echo/BMG. The six-song collection consists of cover versions of 1970s psych and folk songs from across the globe. The final selections hail from Iran, Morocco, the United States and Thailand.
In addition to Khan and members of TOY, Sexwitch includes Mercury Prize-nominated British producer Dan Carey.
"One day, [Carey] called me up and asked if I wanted to go record shopping. So we did, and picked out loads of old weird psych records from different countries, strange folk mountain songs, and took home seven or 10 of them," Khan explained in an interview with Pitchfork. "We got back and played through all of them and some of them we were like, oh my god, this is so badass — really tough, amazing rhythms… We thought, let's get TOY in and put it all down to tape. They learned the songs in a day and recorded them in a day. Each song was one take."
The songs were translated from their native tongues via email through friends, with various translations arriving in Khan's inbox. "People's interpretation of poetry is really interesting — sometimes you translate something really word-for-word, and other people put it into a more poetic context," she explained. "I did a really quick, instinctive pulling out and underlining of things I liked, and started mixing them together to create these songs."
Speaking about the new foray into psychedelic music, she continued: "It's really organic. When I use electronic beats and program things, there's something quite brain about that — you're feeling it in your body but it's like a puzzle you wanna solve, and it gets very detailed. I really enjoy that side of music, but then for this, you can let things play out and improvise. Things can just extend, it's human beings all playing together, like one organism."
You can hear the first sampling of the band's psych-folk offerings by listening to the group's interpretation of Iranian piece "Helelyos" in the player below. Scroll past the Sexwitch tracklisting to give it a spin.
Sexwitch:
1. Ghoroobaa Ghashangan (Iran)
2. Ha Howa Ha Howa (Morocco)
3. Helelyos (Iran)
4. Kassidat El Hakka (Morocco)
5. War In Peace (U.S.A)
6. Lam Plearn Kiew Bao (Thailand)
The self-titled effort is due out on September 25 through Echo/BMG. The six-song collection consists of cover versions of 1970s psych and folk songs from across the globe. The final selections hail from Iran, Morocco, the United States and Thailand.
In addition to Khan and members of TOY, Sexwitch includes Mercury Prize-nominated British producer Dan Carey.
"One day, [Carey] called me up and asked if I wanted to go record shopping. So we did, and picked out loads of old weird psych records from different countries, strange folk mountain songs, and took home seven or 10 of them," Khan explained in an interview with Pitchfork. "We got back and played through all of them and some of them we were like, oh my god, this is so badass — really tough, amazing rhythms… We thought, let's get TOY in and put it all down to tape. They learned the songs in a day and recorded them in a day. Each song was one take."
The songs were translated from their native tongues via email through friends, with various translations arriving in Khan's inbox. "People's interpretation of poetry is really interesting — sometimes you translate something really word-for-word, and other people put it into a more poetic context," she explained. "I did a really quick, instinctive pulling out and underlining of things I liked, and started mixing them together to create these songs."
Speaking about the new foray into psychedelic music, she continued: "It's really organic. When I use electronic beats and program things, there's something quite brain about that — you're feeling it in your body but it's like a puzzle you wanna solve, and it gets very detailed. I really enjoy that side of music, but then for this, you can let things play out and improvise. Things can just extend, it's human beings all playing together, like one organism."
You can hear the first sampling of the band's psych-folk offerings by listening to the group's interpretation of Iranian piece "Helelyos" in the player below. Scroll past the Sexwitch tracklisting to give it a spin.
Sexwitch:
1. Ghoroobaa Ghashangan (Iran)
2. Ha Howa Ha Howa (Morocco)
3. Helelyos (Iran)
4. Kassidat El Hakka (Morocco)
5. War In Peace (U.S.A)
6. Lam Plearn Kiew Bao (Thailand)