If Natasha Khan had her way, this event would be taking place on the edge of a cliff on some windswept English coast, or in a Scandinavian wood full of twinkling tree lights and pretty, bearded boys.

As it is, the Brighton-based singersongwriter is having to make do with Komedia for the launch of the fantastic Fur And Gold album, and she hasn't even had time to make those tapestries she was planning to hang over the stage. You see, things have gotten a little crazy of late.

A former nursery teacher (she enjoyed drawing the mermaids and monsters), seven years ago Khan took a trip to San Francisco and came back as Bat For Lashes.

Previously, while studying film and music at art school in Brighton, she had created bizarre sound installations in which miniature birds were fitted with miniature speakers to create a treebound cacophony.

She channelled this love of combining sound and spectacle into a songwriting project where she and two accomplices donned weird headdresses and floaty gowns to sing of wolves, queens and heartbreak.

Now, after years as the folk-curiosity on multiple bills, Bat For Lashes's selfpuncturing fairytales are finally getting the national attention they deserve, and critics are stepping forward to claim Khan as the next Kate Bush, Bjork, Cat Power "I want to mix together old and new, like folk instruments and hip-hop beats, peacock feathers and tracksuit bottoms," giggles Khan.

"There's warrior woman strength but also a childlike vulnerability, dark sides and joyous, ecstatic sides.

"It's a lot of couplings of opposites I think. I'm discovering that I'm like that myself. I've got an intense amount of different sides to me, all these obsessions and attractions, and heartbreaks."

What's A Girl To Do was written about the breakdown of a seven-year relationship, delivering the final death blow itself when it was overheard by the boyfriend in question.

The quiveringly beautiful Sad Eyes was recorded under the influence of alcohol to recreate the circumstances in which it was written, "unbelievably sad and hungover on whisky".

"While looking for the producer, I had scrapbooks full of notes and pictures which I took along to the meetings," she explains.

"Weather phenomena's always really important to me, and then there's the whole Joan Of Arc thing, and Carrie and Virgin Suicides.

"I was really clear about the universe I wanted to create. I don't think it's strange but the producers were all flabbergasted."

Eventually Khan settled on David Kosten, a man able to keep a straight face when faced with requests for the drums to "sound like a crack of thunder" or for handclaps which evoked "25 girls tapping in a Seventies ballet school".

The result is a record which offsets a mystical atmosphere with startling musical clarity, just as Khan delivers her enchanted lyrics in clipped schoolgirl English.

The finishing touch is Trophy, a darkly sensual duet with Lift To Experience legend Josh T Pearson.

"He's so wonderful," Khan enthuses.

"He's got my favourite boy's voice, it's really sexy. When we met we danced toElvis for half an hour, and then he agreed to sing with me. He's got a really dark sense of humour. We had a houseparty at Christmas and he told the most evil paedophile jokes I've ever heard. I liked that."