Kavus Torabi: Expressing the Inexpressible

Kavus Torabi is a whirling dervish of devilish whimsy.

On a musical map, he has been all over the place, yet usually left of center, exploring creative new directions in bands that have been anything but conventional. If there is anything typical about his pursuits, it is that his musical journeys often pulsate with a polyrhythmic energy that is positively effusive within contrasting styles that usually push the parameters of progressive.

From the vexing power of the vein-popping Cardiacs to the inventive and ghoulish instrumental goulash of Guapo, Torabi has always found himself drawn to music that tests all stylistic boundaries. As the leader of Knifeworld and the latest edition of Gong, he continues to be a charismatic crusader for all things avant-garde. He admits that he has no explanation for why his tastes are so eccentric, often running contrary to common contemporary music.

It just may be an act of rebellion.

Born in Tehran to an Iranian father and an English mother, he moved to Plymouth, U.K., as a toddler. Even his introduction to the world that would become his life’s work was a bit unusual – it was transcribing TV themes that first tickled his musical fancy.

“My grandmother played piano a bit, but my parents weren’t really into music – neither of them had any real interest,” he recalls. “So my only access to music was TV. This was when I was 4 or 5 years old, long before I realized you could be a musician. I became obsessed with the theme for the TV show CHiPs. That was my favorite piece of music. I remember inventing this kind of notation to remember the music.”

His family eventually bought him a piano, which he used as a compositional tool, writing ditties in his own inimitable style. “Music became an escape,” Torabi said. “Whatever was going on, music was this whole separate world. It existed in this unchangeable place. The more I could be among that, the better.”

At the age of about 10, he discovered the Stray Cats, courtesy of their song, “Runaway Boys.” That changed everything.

“The Stray Cats were like a beam coming out of space,” he said. “I remember them coming on Top of the Pops, all three of them in leather jackets and Brian Setzer with that big, beautiful Gretsch guitar. They didn’t look or sound like anything else at the time. I didn’t see it as a more hip version of ‘50s rock ’n’ roll known as rockabilly. To me, it sounded like totally alien music.”

He was mesmerized by Setzer and his chosen instrument. “That was the moment that I decided this was what I wanted to do when I grew up,” he said, noting that he began to teach himself how to play guitar. “As soon as I could afford one, which actually was a long time, I bought a Gretsch. I always wanted one.”

Torabi was soon investigating more bands and even more musical genres. “You start listening to the same stuff as other people and then you start isolating bits of songs that do something funny to you,” he said. “I remember listening to Iron Maiden when I was like 12 and they went off into this section that was a bit funny. You start listening for songs that did more of that.”

By his late teens, Torabi’s appetite for avant-garde sounds was becoming insatiable. “I had gone beyond genre and started to listening to music that I thought was visionary. This was the late ‘80s and for me, it was Cardiacs and Captain Beefheart and the instrumental side of ‘80s King Crimson, Steve Reich and Sonic Youth. And then there were artists like John Zorn, Fred Frith and Henry Cow and – by extension – Robert Wyatt, Syd Barrett and Nico.

“It was these were people who were making melodies that you don’t hear in normal life. It’s not shopping mall music where, regardless of the arrangement, tunes go a certain way and the melodies land in the place you expect them to and the words are what you expect them to be about. They were making interesting colors in their chords.”

For Torabi, the music was pointing to his future.

“I was discovering this whole other world of music that was on the edge of reality, where things are governed by different laws of physics,” he said. “It was a musical world that I wanted to be in and hopefully one that I’ve subsequently stayed true to, regardless of whether I’ve been doing instrumental rock with Guapo or whatever Knifeworld or Gong is doing. Hopefully it’s all still on that weird edge.”

Knifeworld was originally conceived as a solo project following the breakup of his first band, The Monsoon Bassoon, a psychedelic rock outfit that he had fronted with guitarist pal Dan Chudley. Initial Knifeworld recording sessions featured Torabi playing the bulk of the instruments, but he gradually pulled in a collective of collaborators to help him fully expand the project’s eclectic sonic palette.

“I always think the best music is psychedelic,” he said. “For me, psychedelic music is not a particular genre. It’s a quality that a particular music has. Whether it’s La Mer by Claude Debussy, Octet by Steve Reich, Chiastic Slide by Autechre, Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom, or Close to the Edge by Yes, there’s this visionary, otherworldly quality in which you feel that something is being revealed to you, something mysterious and unspeakable.

“There is a great deal of prog that sounds like shopping mall music to me with clever drumming. It’s like soft rock with busy arrangements or shredding guitars. But psychedelic rock is different. You know it when you hear it. For people who are prog fans, Close to the Edge is one of the ultimate psychedelic records. The minute those sounds come in, the curtain is opened and you’re in their world right until the fade out of Siberian Khatru. Another universe with its own laws of gravity and physics has been revealed to you.”

Torabi recruited various musical acquaintances in order to establish a credible lineup for Knifeworld’s live performances. “When the album came out, I needed a band to gig the record,” he said. “Cardiacs had been taking up all my time, but when that group came to a very unfortunate end (band leader Tim Smith suffered a series of strokes after a heart attack), Knifeworld became my main thing. So when we did a couple of shows, I just thought that I wanted to do this as my band.”

Finding kindred spirits was not difficult. He had known Melanie Woods, formerly of Sidi Bou Said, for years and asked her to contribute vocals. Various lineup changes eventually led him to land keyboardist Emmett Elvin and bassoonist/saxophonist Chloe Herington, both of whom he knew from Chrome Hoof, an experimental chamber rock orchestra in which he was briefly a member. Other Knifeworld members were drawn from other sundry London art rock ensembles.

“These are people who get what I’m all about,” Torabi said. “They’re incredibly sensitive players to what we do. They play so well together that I write these parts for them and between them they figure it out. They work on my arrangements. I don’t really score – I hear the arrangements in my head and then I just sing the parts into my phone or play them on the guitar. They really own it and turn the music into their own. It takes on a completely different life.”

Bottled Out of Eden, Knifeworld’s third album which was released by Inside Out Music in 2016, was mostly workshopped on the road while touring with ex-Oceansize guitarist Mike Vennart. “We did it the old-fashioned way, the way that bands used to do it,” Torabi said. “We played most of the stuff 10-15 times live and then we went down to the south of France and recorded it. As a result, the album sounds much looser and I think the arrangements breathe a lot more. To me, the dynamics are much more exciting.”

Torabi was planning to make Knifeworld his singular focus until fate intervened after Daevid Allen of Gong appeared as a guest on a British radio show that he hosted with Steve Davis. Allen would subsequently invite Torabi to join Gong without even hearing him play.

“I’d been a Gong fan since I was 16,” Torabi said. “The first record I heard was Flying Teapot, but the first record I bought was Camembert Electrique. I loved it, was mad for it. Gong was such a big part of what I was into at the time. By age 18-19, all roads for me led away from traditional rock and into this otherworldly stuff. Gong was very much a part of that.

“When Daevid was going to be a part of our radio show, we were really excited. He was wonderful and we really connected. We swapped numbers and began texting each other. When Gong came to London to play, I went to see them and hung out with him again. He was doing an improvised gig with Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra very near to where I lived. That night he asked me if I wanted to play guitar with Gong.”

Needless to say, the offer came as a complete surprise.

“He gave me a lot of reasons which were extremely flattering,” Torabi said. “He told me that he felt the band needed fire and that I would bring that. I said, ‘But you’ve never heard me play.’ And he said, ‘I don’t need to. I’ve done this before with Mike Howlett and I know you’re going to be right for this band.’ And I said, ‘You know I can’t play guitar like Steve Hillage.’ He said, ‘I’m not interested in what you can’t do. I’m interested in what you can do.’ Two weeks later, we booked a rehearsal to play together and it was terrific.”

Gong toured Brazil and everything seemed great. Then Allen was diagnosed with cancer. The band had booked an extended 46-date tour to promote their album, I See You, which had been produced by Allen’s son Orlando and was released in November 2014. Rather than throw in the towel, Allen turned to Torabi to take up the baton.

“Daevid said, ‘Well man, I can’t do this forever and I don’t want the band to end with me bowing out.’ He seemed so healthy, so I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure Daevid.’ I wanted to be the guitar player. That’s all. I was completely reluctant to sing, but we felt like we needed to tour to promote the album, so I was very, very nervous. As a Gong fan, I felt like I wouldn’t buy into this. This was a guy who had only just joined the band and now he’s fronting this thing? I was really, really reluctant.”

Gong pared the tour down to less than a dozen dates.

“I told the band that I would do these gigs and then that’s it. I don’t want to be in the bogus Gong,” he said. “Then we brought in drummer Cheb Nettles into the rehearsals and that changed everything. I’d played with him before and I felt like he could hold a candle up to Pierre Moerlen. He’s an extraordinary drummer. As a musician, it’s a dream to play with him.

“The gigs went down really well. Daevid saw some videos on YouTube and we sent him some recordings and he said, ‘Guys, this is the band. This is what Gong is now.’”

Indeed, when the new incarnation began playing without Allen, there was a weird magic at work, which wasn’t all that surprising to those concerned. As Torabi likes to point out, Gong is the only band – other than Magma – with its own planet.

“For Daevid, Gong always had to be upwards-moving, always traveling upwards with a positive energy, embracing all ideas and cultures. It was this ascending thing,” Torabi said. “For me, there are elements in Gong now that we don’t have. For instance, fans will ask why don’t we do space whispers? As far as I’m concerned, Gilli (Smyth) owned that. It would seem really bogus and really contrived if we brought in someone to do the Gilli thing. By the same token, people will ask why we don’t have synths, like Tim Blake. If we did that, we’d be like a tribute band. This kinda works like this, you know?

“There’s also the kind of silliness that Daevid brought to things. I can’t do that, but I hope I can bring a sense of joy and fun while tapping into the spiritual side of it. Effectively, I’m trying to fulfill the role of a shaman, acting as a conduit from one world to the other. To me, music is a shamanic act. There’s this whole world of music that you try to funnel and present. I can do this but I can’t do the pothead pixies and octave doctors and that whole Gong mythology because that was Daevid’s trip. He had already put that to bed anyway. It’s about taking what inspired us about Gong in the first place and then channeling that.”

By the time Allen passed away in March 2015, the die had already been cast. Torabi was ready to help the band carry on the legacy of its founder in any way that he could. He had been collecting Gong-like riffs for most of his musical career anyway – “Gong always had the best riffs,” he says – and now he had an outlet for them.

“I went from being very skeptical about my place in the band to having to embrace it, which for me meant making a new record,” he said. “We did some more touring, but for me it was all about making a good record. If we couldn’t make a record worthy of being called Gong – it still sounds like us without aping the past – there would be no point. In the end, I am really proud of what we were able to do. I felt like Rejoice I’m Dead was a really good album.”

Torabi said the success of the new Gong rests on the talents of the musicians who now comprise the band.

Brazilian guitarist Fabio Golfetti has a long history with Allen, having formed The Invisible Opera Company nearly three decades ago. It was Allen’s dream to have a collective of musicians on each continent and Golfetti headed the South American contingent. Bassist Dave Sturt, who recorded three albums with Jade Warrior, has been playing with Gong for the better part of a decade. Woodwinds player Ian East is a Royal Academy of Music graduate and a noted session musician.

“Quite honestly, the chemistry has been extraordinary,” Torabi said. “I’ve been playing in bands since I was a kid and it’s so rare to find a band that captures the actual magic. Everybody is in the right place. It just totally works.”

All of the members of Gong are songwriters, so the development of new Gong music is a relatively organic process. New ideas abound. “Whenever anybody submits an idea, we all work on it,” Torabi said. “In Gong, the philosophy is, ‘Don’t submit an idea unless you’re happy to have it completely ripped apart and changed.’ If you’re really married to something, save it for your own band. You understand that different people bring different ideas.”

For Torabi, music is expressing the unexpressable and the music of Gong, by definition, defies categorization. And yet there is clearly a sound – or at least a musical spirit – that is embodied by those who fly in the band’s orbit.

“You hope we are honoring Daevid’s legacy respectfully, but we also have to own it and make it our band, too. There are things that are inherently Gong and I can’t put my finger on all of them, but when we are writing, there are things that sound really good, but they’re just not Gong. There was a track we recorded for the last album and it sounded too much like one of my things. We ended up putting it out as a bonus and a lot of people really like it, but I thought it stuck out.”

Although he is an integral part of the two bands, Torabi views Knifeworld and Gong as separate entities.

“To me, it’s important that each band lives in its own universe,” he said. “I’m good at compartmentalizing. When I’m doing Gong, I’m only doing Gong. Some people can be in one band by day and then be mixing their other band at night, but I can’t. When I’m in Gong World, I’m only there. When I’m writing for Knifeworld, I’m only thinking about that band – that drummer, that keyboard player, that singer and those horn players. I’m writing songs to be arranged and played by Knifeworld.

“No matter which bands you play in, it’s all part of your body of work. It’s all part of the journey. Obviously what you’ve been doing influences the next thing. It often makes you change your approach. If I had not joined Gong, it is very possible that Knifeworld might have become much heavier. Gong is really powerful, so full-on and very riffy. It made me pull that side out of Knifeworld. Because Gong was scratching that itch, I suddenly wanted to make Knifeworld softer and more gentle. It’s a very different band now. Knifeworld used to rock a lot more.”

While Torabi looks at both bands differently from a musical perspective, his performance style is very similar. On stage, he evokes a contemporary cross between Marc Bolan and Kevin Ayers, his full head of hair bouncing to the beat while sporting a paisley jacket or large polka dot shirt.

“I love playing dress up,” he said. “For me, a great part of being in a band is dressing up. I never get these guys who turn up in band T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans and white trainers. I know there’s a perfectly good argument to say it’s all about the music, that it shouldn’t matter what you wear. I get that, but music is a magical experience and going to a gig should be a transformative experience. It goes back to the shamanic thing.

“You’ve got to present yourself as something more. You’ve got to turn it into this magical experience. When you see a good show, you come out changed. That’s alchemy. It’s the changing of base metals into gold. When we play, we hopefully turn the venue into a psychedelic temple. When you dress up – and I found this in Cardiacs as well – it’s not just camouflage. When you put on crazy, colorful clothes, you’re not just going to look at your feet. You become the character.”

In both Gong and Knifeworld, Torabi continues to seek new sounds. “I can’t articulate what is,” he said. “There’s a place I’m trying to reach and I keep thinking I’m getting closer. It may be one of those things that is an illusion, like trying to reach the end of the rainbow. You think you’re nearly there and you never quite get there. It’s like a mirage, but the journey to get there is great.

“When you’re writing, there’s something you’re trying to say. Often it’s different with each tune. There’s something you’re trying to get to the heart of and you never quite get there, but while you’re making music, you’re always thinking, ‘Maybe this time.’ Sometimes I feel like I’ve gotten closer to it than others. You never stop searching, never stop trying to get the center of the bullseye.

“I used to be far more anxious about things. Throughout my 20s, there was always that element of being desperate to ‘make it.’ It’s always driving you and it can get in the way of making sensible decisions. When you’re ambitious, you can get the feeling that time is running out.

“To still be able to make music at age 46 leaves me extremely excited. Look where it’s gotten me. I can’t believe that because I didn’t pay attention in school and I liked some weird-ass music and stuck with it, that I ended up here. It’s extraordinary.”

Energetic and effusive in his musical pursuits, Torabi has found true contentment in the dual purpose of Knifeworld and Gong. He is working on a solo record that he hopes will allow him to play occasional solo gigs, but his heart remains with both bands. He talks of taking Knifeworld in a new direction, possibly exploring extended pieces played in a Steve Reich-meets-Swans style. Gong will always be Gong, no matter who is in the band.

“It’s a weird thing,” he said. “By the time 1975 came along, Daevid was out of Gong and the band had gone in a different direction with jazz fusion, but it was still Gong. Now we’re in a new phase. We’re the guys currently steering the craft and pointing the nose towards the sun. We’re the ones riding this ship now and at some point we’ll get off and someone else is going to get onto it and then steer it somewhere else.”