Hi all, a day late, but what a treat we have for you. This one is just a cascade of musical joy, off-kilter observation of the universe, and general honing in on what really matters.
Kavus Torabi is a true journeyman. I think I might have seen him in one or other of the many bands he’s played in over the years, but the first times I knowingly saw him in action were recently: DJing with the legend that is Steve Davis, and fronting Gong, in the place of the late Daevid Allen. The latter was an extraordinary gig, it was in Southampton in 2021, the first show I went to post Covid lockdowns, and the first time I’d seen Gong play since 1992. I didn’t know what to expect, but the sense that Torabi had been passed a mystical baton by Allen and was running with it was extraordinary, especially given the running themes of time as illusion and dissolution of self that go through Gong’s music.
He currently plays with Knifeworld, Guapo, Utopia Strong (with Davis) and a good few other acts, but as you’ll see everything is one ongoing, all-enveloping project for Torabi. We got from Carcass to The Smurfs in just the first few minutes, and it all makes sense in his world. And this sense of constant pursuit of a greater understanding and the pure pleasure of music making means that at 52, Torabi is both making sounds as great as anything he ever has before, and is a delight to talk to. I think Brian captured his youthful energy too (and did some psychedelic AI colourising for fun too). We covered a lot of ground in an hour, and the conversation ended up with one of the most optimistically defiant pay-offs yet. It also criss-crossed much of the ground we’ve previously covered - particularly the topics of small towns and indie clubs - from some wonderfully oblique angles. Shut off any distractions, and get in to it. We’d already started talking when the tape began rolling, as our initial small-talk rolled into discussion of DJ sets with Davis, and my experience of a small hours We Out Here festival ambient set...
The chillout room was really formative for me. It was exactly like you say, where anything goes. And also anyone goes. Did you experience much of that through the 90s?
Yeah, a little. I was 16 in 1988, and the rave thing was really happening around then. I suppose I was adjacent to it. I went to a few… Plymouth was quite a big rave city. We had quite a few big clubs in Union Street. So a lot of people would come from the southwest, the sort of raves that would be happening in Plymouth. I'd go along to those and I always loved it, especially the chillout room thing. I've always much been more from a DJing perspective, felt a lot more kind of at home just doing like mad, long segues between unusual and strange psychedelic bits of music to another, rather than being able to keep people dancing, which I'm not especially good at.
But yes, the rave thing was something I was more adjacent to, rather than directly involved. My brother was a really big raver, but I was probably more on the weird rock fan end of rave. I was really into Orbital, The Orb, The Future Sound Of London, and then stuff like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, more that kind, more that side of things rather than just the actual, really proper, pure Detroit techno or hardcore or anything.
The theme, really, of this Substack and of all of these interviews, and especially how they interlock with each other, is subculture. Do you think, in terms of genres, subcultures, scenes?
It's interesting because I suppose I felt adjacent to lots of different themes and scenes and subcultures. I was very aware of them, but I could never entirely fully behind any one of them because I never really got on with the sort of vibe that some scenes would have. And you could really be into one sort of scene. If you were into that, it didn't look cool if you were into something else. I had allegiances in so many different camps. Growing up in Plymouth, which is very much a provincial city, it was really defined by all the different social groups.
Goth was a big thing around then. I used to dress like a goth. I was really into Fields of the Nephilim, Bauhaus and Sisters Of Mercy. I was playing in a metal band, and I was really into metal and the underground metal stuff and Voivod, Carcass, Napalm Death, Black Sabbath and Slayer. And then I was really into what was going on with the indie-ish thing with Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and loved odd British bands. And then also really into the psychedelic stuff from the ‘70s and the weird stuff that has really became my thing a lot more. I always had an ear to that.
I was just endlessly fascinated by music and everything that went with music. I really loved the culture. I used to have a fanzine. I used to put on gigs and DJ. Everything about the kind of culture of music was, really exciting. It seemed to me that all these scenes were largely the same. It was just different haircuts. The obsessive gatekeeping at the top of these scenes… because there would be a real hierarchy. The goth scene, I remember the hierarchy of who the key goths were and who the baby goths were. I think got a part from all of them because I was in bands, I was a musician, and they didn't go so hard on you if you were if you're a musician.
This is all enormously familiar. You're two years older than me and I grew up in middle middle England, small town, very much the same set of things going on. The other thing that was going on at the same time was the traveller convoys.
I also took part with that as well, a little bit.
Before that, as a young child, were you there from birth?
I was born in Iran and then I came to the UK when I was 18 months old, so it would've been 1973. And at that point, we just moved around all over the place because my dad was a doctor and he was just moving to get work. I ended up Plymouth in 1977, but before then I'd lived in Hull, York, Sheffield and Nuneaton. Each of those we’d live in different sort of residencies. We'd often live in hospital accommodation and then maybe get a house. And then finally we ended up in Plymouth in about 1977. And that's really when I came of age. I was 21 before I moved to London.
So your very early memories must be quite well fragmented with that itinerant lifestyle.
Yeah. We were in Sheffield for about two years. I remember it was really sad, saying goodbye to friends, knowing that we were going down to Plymouth. It was so far away back then with all the A roads and stuff. It would be a day's journey just to get up north where my, my mum's side of the family was from. So yeah, I suppose so. But maybe had a positive effect because I don't really feel tied to any one place, particularly, which is maybe quite a good thing.
Can you remember the earliest cultural exposures aside from children's stuff? Did your parents play music in the house? Was there anything that leapt out of the TV?
My parents weren't really into music. Regrettably, I think they viewed any of the arts with kind of suspicion and the kind of people that were involved in any arts they viewed very suspiciously. My dad is from Iran. I don’t know if this is true of all… well, it's certainly not true of all Iranians because there’s so much beautiful culture that's come from there. But I think he sort of sees art and music as just entertainment rather than a big spiritual and lifelong quest. So he couldn't see why his son would be interested in pursuing something he saw as so frivolous as music… and it wasn't really in the house.
So my first exposure to music really came from TV themes and hymns at school. I was thinking about this the other day. Before pop music came along in 1980, I think I can pinpoint the beginning of my obsessive obsessiveness, was the Smurfs. The Smurfs were a thing. I was really, really into Smurfs. They – “they” [laughs] – released a single with [Dutch musician] Father Abraham called “The Smurf Song”1. And then they had a follow up single called “Dippety Day” which I had. This music was really like affecting. The whole Smurf world I found really affecting. I found this whole other world really, really enchanting.
I think my introduction to a lifelong love of comic books and comic art too came from this Smurf book, which is Belgian. So it's kind of that bande dessinée2 kind of thing. And I think now when I look back on how obsessive I got about particular bands or particular music, I can see that had that same resonance with the Smurfs, where I think about them all the time and dream about them and just want to be immersed in this Smurf world, you know.
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