Review: Kavus Torabi ‘October By Name’
There are few musicians whose careers make the idea of musical boundaries seem quite so irrelevant as Kavus Torabi‘s. To follow his journey is to move through a succession of musical worlds that, on the surface at least, have very little in common.
The anarchic, intricate and gloriously eccentric progressive music of Cardiacs; the experimental, rhythmically uncompromising world of Guapo; the psychedelic, cosmic expanse of Gong; the complex, multi-layered universe of Knifeworld; the ambient electronics, improvisation and kraut explorations of The Utopia Strong with Steve Davis and Michael J. York; and, running through it all, an increasingly personal solo career.
What makes the journey remarkable is not simply the variety, but the distance between those destinations. Torabi has never seemed particularly interested in staying within one musical language for very long. Yet listen closely, and there is always a thread connecting it all: beneath the fractured rhythms, psychedelic excursions, avant-garde experimentation and electronic improvisation is an enduring fascination with melody, atmosphere and the possibilities of the unexpected.
Torabi can be cerebral without becoming cold, technically adventurous without losing the emotional centre of a song, and psychedelic without disappearing completely into abstraction. Perhaps that comes from Cardiacs more than anywhere else(?). Their extraordinary collision of progressive complexity, punk energy, eccentricity and almost disarmingly beautiful melody seems to have left a permanent mark, albeit not as a formula to be repeated, but as a lesson in how apparently incompatible ideas can coexist.
Gong opened another door into psychedelic and cosmic freedom; Guapo pushed rhythm and structure into more experimental territory; and The Utopia Strong allowed improvisation, electronics and krautrock repetition to become the music itself. His solo work has increasingly become the place where these experiences feel less like separate destinations and more like parts of the same journey.
Hip To The Jag brought the musician closer to the personal. Heaven’s Sun, his collaboration with composer and songwriter Richard Wileman, opened the music into another spacious and exploratory landscape, while The Banishing brought the emotional dimension even closer to the surface. And that makes October By Name such an intriguing proposition.
There is something almost divine about the way these songs unfold. Torabi creates a world that feels mystical and transcendental without ever becoming detached from human emotion. From beginning to end, I hear the colours of late ’60s and ’70s psychedelia but filtered through an imagination that refuses to become nostalgic.
Signals Shine immediately establishes that atmosphere. There is something of Syd Barrett’s ability to make psychedelia feel innocent, mysterious and slightly unsteady, but I also hear the unmistakable spirit of The Incredible String Band in its strange, pastoral beauty. It is psychedelic music with a folk heart, where melodies seem to emerge from some half-remembered dream rather than follow any conventional route. That combination gives the song an almost enchanted quality, as though Torabi has reached back into the late ’60s and brought some of its most open-minded spirit into the present without ever making the track feel like an exercise in nostalgia.
In Her Radiance takes that sense of wonder somewhere more emotionally direct. It has an experimental folk beauty that feels both radiant and fragile. His eccentricity seems to recede behind the song itself, leaving something remarkably open-hearted in its place.
Then comes Water Into Wine, perhaps the album’s most enchanting moment. A psych-folk ballad of extraordinary purity, it has a melodic simplicity that initially feels almost disarming. Yet beneath that simplicity is something deeper and more mysterious. At moments, I hear the kind of emotional grandeur associated with The Moody Blues, where a beautiful melody can suddenly seem to carry an almost disproportionate weight. It hits hard, but in the best possible way.
an artist who continues to find new ways of turning the unexpected into something profoundly moving…
From The Storm then lets the multi-instrumentalist disappear into another dimension. The music becomes incandescent, atmospheric and increasingly experimental, drifting towards the krautrock-inflected space that connects naturally with The Utopia Strong. Repetition becomes hypnotic rather than restrictive, and the song seems to lose interest in the conventional idea of where it should go. It simply keeps travelling.
Enter My Shameful Namesake, perhaps the track that most clearly connects Torabi the musician with Torabi the person. Musically, it is wonderfully eclectic, with moments that evoke Iranian and wider world-music traditions. But its real fascination lies in the title. His name carries a history that stretches far beyond the man who bears it today, as he explain the song in one of his social media videos; There is a king, there is war, and there is a story behind the name that reaches deep into Persian history.
That changes the way I hear the song. A name is something we inherit before we have any say in who we become. We carry it through every version of ourselves, while it can also carry histories, places and stories belonging to people who came before us. Suddenly, My Shameful Namesake feels like it is about much more than pronunciation or identity. And perhaps that fits Torabi‘s entire musical journey beautifully.
Closer Ancestor’s Song is where the album reaches its most hypnotic state. Experimental psych, acid, space and folk dissolve into one another until the distinctions barely matter. The repetition becomes almost meditative but never loses its sense of wonder. And his voice is simply miraculous. There is fragility in it, but also warmth and an almost disarming sincerity. After everything Torabi has explored across his career, it is striking that one of the album’s most powerful instruments is ultimately his own voice, carrying a melody through the haze and making the most otherworldly passages feel strangely human.
The fact that he performed, recorded and mixed the album himself only deepens that intimacy. Nothing feels designed merely to demonstrate how much he can do. Even when the arrangements become elaborate, the music retains the feeling of one person following an idea wherever it leads.
That is perhaps the greatest pleasure of the album. All those worlds the man has inhabited – progressive, psychedelic, folk, experimental, electronic and cosmic are still present, but they no longer feel like separate identities. They have somehow converged.
October By Name leaves a beautiful afterglow. Psychedelic, mystical, strange and deeply human, it gathers the many worlds Kavus Torabi has travelled through and somehow makes them feel like one. Beneath all the experimentation is an extraordinary warmth, carried above all by his voice.
A remarkable album from an artist who continues to find new ways of turning the unexpected into something profoundly moving.
Label: Believers Roast
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Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
