And the Welcome everyone to the Soda Jaker on Songwriting Podcast. I'm Brian joined as always by Simon and with us for

episode 271 is an Iv novella winning and make a re-nominated English singer-songwriter

and musician. As well as her six excellent studio albums to date, she's composed music for film

soundtracks, television and podcasts and and collaborated with the likes of Beck,

Damon Alborn, Scott Walker and John Hopkins.

Her current offering, The Dream of Delphi, was inspired by the life-changing experience of becoming

a mother during the pandemic, and we recently had the chance to speak with her about the album's

creation and much more.

We're very pleased to welcome the wonderful

Natasha Khan aka Backfor Ashes to the show. Our guest was born in London in

1979 and moved with her family to Rickmans's worth Harvardshire when she was five.

She started taking piano lessons around nine or ten, but found she much preferred coming up with

their own tunes to learning classical pieces, a tendency which soon developed into writing her own songs. By her teens

Natasha had taken up guitar and become borderline obsessed with Nirvana's

Kirk Cobain but also discovered the likes of Joni Mitchell, Piork and Kate Bush.

She studied music and visual arts at the University of Brighton,

where she also discovered the work of Steve Reich and Susan Hiller.

Around 2004, Natasha adopted the Batful Ashes moniker and began recording her own Reich-inspired music,

first as a hobby, but eventually performing her material around Brighton.

Having Julie made a name for herself, she signed to the indie label, label Echo while holding down a job as a

nursery school teacher Natasha Rotum recorded her critically acclaimed

Mercury Prize nominated 2006 debut album Fair and Gold on the strength of that success she was subsequently

...