A limited vinyl version was released by Los Angeles indie label Manimal Vinyl in May 2007. In 2007, Bat for Lashes and Echo signed an international licensing deal with Parlophone Records, which re-released Fur and Gold the same year. Echo released her debut album, Fur and Gold, in September 2006. In 2006, she signed to Echo, a record label owned by independent publisher Chrysalis Music that acted as an incubator for artists before "upstreaming" them to major labels. Khan's debut single, "The Wizard", was released digitally through Drowned in Sound records and on 7" vinyl through Khan's own imprint, She Bear Records. Khan playing New York City's Bowery Ballroom in 2007, promoting Fur and Gold She has said the name Bat for Lashes "doesn’t really mean anything It conjured up Halloween-y images, and it sounded metal and feminine.” Music career 2006–08: Fur and Gold After finishing her degree, Khan completed an NVQ in play work and childcare, and worked as a nursery school teacher, dedicating her spare time to developing songs, recording demos, and gigging in Brighton. Īfter returning to the UK, Khan settled in Brighton in 2000 to study music and visual arts at the University of Brighton, where she produced sound installations, animations, and performances influenced by artists including Steve Reich and Susan Hiller. She said: "My internal imaginary life was really fruitful at that time.All day long just listening and dreaming, while counting the cards to be packed." With money saved from the job, she embarked on a three-month road trip through the United States and Mexico. Then it got quite lonely." After completing her GCSEs and A-Levels, Khan took a job in a card-packing factory where she would work while listening to songs she had made. When I came back from being suspended they had told the small group of friends that I did have there that they weren't allowed to talk to me because I was a really bad influence. She told The Daily Telegraph: "I was an outsider at school. Khan was subject to racial abuse during secondary school for being of Pakistani heritage, played truant, and was suspended after swearing and throwing a chair at a teacher. It is a similar thing, the need to thrive on heightened communal experience." After her father left the family when Khan was 11, she taught herself to play the piano, which became "a channel to express things, to get them out". She attended many of her father's and her uncle Jahangir's squash matches, which she felt inspired her creativity: "The roar of the crowd is intense it is ceremonial, ritualistic, I feel like the banner got passed to me but I carried it on in a creative way. The family moved to Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, when she was five years old. A member of the Khan family, she is the granddaughter of squash player Nasrullah Khan, the niece of squash players Jahangir Khan and Torsam Khan, the stepdaughter of singer and actress Salma Agha, and half-sister of actress Sasha Agha.
#DISCOGS SALMA AGHA PROFESSIONAL#
Khan was born to an English mother and an immigrant Pakistani father, professional squash player Rehmat Khan.