The Utopia Strong

Event information

The life of a psychonaut can take one to many plateaus of reality. Opinions vary as regards which of these are either desirable or optimal. All things considered though, it's fair to say that once the average cerebral wanderer finds themselves a stoned skeleton on a motorbike, it’s a sign that they're going places.

Such were the movements of The Utopia Strong, in making their third and arguably trippiest full length album for Rocket Recordings. As the band explain: "When recording we tend to have books, bits of art and interesting things lying around the place. (Kavus) had recently bought the Paul Kirchner compendium, 'Awaiting The Collapse'. Paul's character Dope Rider (the skeleton in question) drives around the desert, getting into all manner of high jinx and spouting cosmic philosophy, highlighting the absurdities of life, death and the American mythos. When we had created that particular track, one of our most beautiful and outré, it seemed to name itself. Certainly, we were looking at the comic strips while listening to it and something about it’s wide-screen vibes and the beautiful desert seemed to marry together".

Serendipity has always played a strong role in The Utopia Strong, with the improvisatory approach of Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi and Mike York - as well as the innate chemistry between the trio - allowing them to take extensions through dimensions that frequently end up as much of a surprise to the band as the listener.

The band has summarily found ways to evolve its approach to facilitate the most adventurous exploratory missions possible. In this realm, the band’s formidable history - Steve as a snooker champion and bona fide household name, Kavus as a psychedelic and progressive polymath in the like of Gong, Cardiacs et al, and Mike in his work with Coil, Current 93 and as one of the UK's foremost bagpipe makers - is transcended and usurped by their combined psychic chemistry.