Mistakes That Nature Made is the debut album from Sydney "genre deconstructionists" The Khanz. Two years in the making, the album follows on several years of the band honing their craft at live shows supporting the likes of San Cisco, Bluejuice (RIP), Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Sticky Fingers and more.
"We chose these songs from a batch of 40 that had been written over the years leading up to the recording," explains vocalist/guitarist Themba Thompson. "Our idea was to balance the organic with the technical, and see how well the programmed world and the natural world could live together on a record.
"Most of the songs had been through many reworks and while this was happening we would perform them live. The magic moments in a performance are when you're lucidly travelling through a song's journey without being distracted by its structure. When a song achieves that fluidity live, it's done. There were so many challenges it would be hard to list them all. Trial and error was the remedy most of the time. We had to be happy failing 40 times before we achieved even the most minor of successes," the frontman laughs. "That's probably why it took two years! But we work with a magnifying glass. Our catchphrase during recording was 'organic mechanic' — balancing roots with electronica, vibe with precision. The album title reflects both the creative ambition and our approach to production."
