Kavus Torabi
Kavus Torabi is a British musician, composer, record label owner and radio broadcaster. Described as a "psychedelic polymath", he is a multi-instrumentalist known for his work in the psychedelic, avant-garde rock field. Torabi has fronted the bands Knifeworld, Gong and the Utopia Strong, as well as being a member of Cardiacs, Guapo and the Monsoon Bassoon.
Born in Iran of English and Iranian decent, Torabi moved to the UK in 1973 and was raised in Plymouth. He was a founding member of the Monsoon Bassoon, whose album I Dig Your Voodoo was produced by Tim Smith, the leader of Cardiacs. After working as the band's guitar technician for eight years, Torabi joined Cardiacs as a second guitarist and vocalist in 2003, replacing Jon Poole, initially for three shows performing the band's early materal captured on the live album The Special Garage Concerts. His first Cardiacs studio work was the 2007 single "Ditzy Scene", which he wrote the words for. The band went into an indefinite hiatus in 2008 due to Smith experiencing neurological problems following a cardiac arrest. Five years after Smith's death, LSD was released in 2025 as the only Cardiacs studio album with Torabi.
Between 2009 and 2018, Torabi led his own group Knifeworld. With the snooker player Steve Davis, Torabi co-presented the radio show The Interesting Alternative Show on Phoenix FM, has DJ'd at events, co-founded the electronic band the Utopia Strong, and wrote the joint autobiography Medical Grade Music. After being introduced by to Gong founder Daevid Allen by Davis, Torabi joined the progressive rock band as an additional guitarist and debuted on the 2014 album I See You. Following the illness and death of Allen from cancer in 2015, Gong continued with Torabi as frontman. With Torabi left in charge, Gong have released the studio albums Rejoice! I'm Dead!, The Universe Also Collapses and Unending Ascending, with the upcoming album Bright Spirit to release in 2026.
Early life
Torabi was born on 5 December 1971 in Tehran, Iran to an Iranian father and an English mother. His family moved to the UK when he was eighteen months old in 1973; originally planning to return once his father had made sufficient money, but ending up settling permanently following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Torabi has said most of his family remains in Iran, but he himself has never returned due to the compulsory two years national service he would have to serve. Torabi was raised in Plymouth.According to Torabi his parents "weren't really into music, and there wasn’t much around the house." He recalls his mother having three or four albums and knowing between two and four chords which she tried to teach him, which he said caused an aversion to learning chords that was "probably the starting point" to his peculiar musical style. In an interview, Torabi recalled trying to make a snare drum out of a biscuit tin and cling-film before moving onto the guitar. He was interested in the music from TV shows, inventing his own form of notation and using it to score out the theme from CHiPs.'''' When he was seven, his family bought a piano and he used it as a compositional tool – already writing songs of his own, he showed little interest in learning those of others. From 1980, he became interested in music through Brian Setzer and Stray Cats after seeing them on Saturday morning TV, thinking, "Oh god, this is what I wanna be. I've got to be this guy." Eight years later, aged sixteen, he discovered his main musical touchstone in the form of Cardiacs, although in the interim he had taught himself more about music by sequential obsessions with various other bands and music forms. Torabi, a devoted fan of Cardiacs, was a 16-year-old student when he heard the band's first proper album A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window in 1988 which a friend had lent him.
In his early 20s and late teens, Torabi often took LSD and wrote music with it. He credits psychedelics with rewiring his mind in a positive way and allowing him to turn his life around from the "very miserable life" he could have had, given his upbringing. Torabi made decision to move to London and take music seriously while on LSD. He moved from Plymouth to London when he was 21.
Career
1988–2001: Die Laughing and the Monsoon Bassoon, working with Tim Smith
Torabi's first significant band was the Plymouth-based death/thrash metal band Die Laughing, formed in 1988, in which he played guitar and first met his close friend and collaborator, Dan Chudley. Die Laughing released three demos before they eventually split in 1993.In 1994, Torabi reunited with Chudley, who had been playing in a band called Squid Squad since the previous year. The two formed a new band called the Monsoon Bassoon, Torabi a founding member, in which they were joined by bass player Laurie Osbourne and two more Squid Squad members. Their musical – an energetic and tuneful form of psychedelic math rock – was built around Torabi and Chudley's singular compositions. The group soon relocated from Plymouth to Leyton, East London and began to gain underground attention, releasing recordings on their own Weird Neighbourhood Records label.
Torabi, a guitarist and vocalist of the Monsoon Bassoon, was one of the band's three frontpeople and the visual focus. In a review of the band on stage at The Water Rats in London, NME noted how the "sylvan idyll" of singer and clarinet and flute player Sarah Measures "is bulldozed by the sound of guitarists Daniel Chudley and Kavus Torabi attempting to raze the venue to the ground by sheer volume alone."
The band's debut single "Wise Guy" was described by Matt Evans of The Quietus as "an extraordinary 7" single – five minutes of herky-jerky guitar pop, bafflingly intricate interlocking guitars, innumerable time changes, passages of crushing heaviness, stop-start absurdity and lush three-part male and female vocal harmonies, culminating in a lengthy instrumental math-rock/free-blowing woodwind meltdown." NME said "The chattering vocal interplay between guitarist Kavus Torabi and occasional clarinettist Sarah Measures always seems to be teetering on the verge of chaos, but as forthcoming space-punk opus 'The King Of Evil' shows, they’re well on their way to being frighteningly competent." Cardiacs were a major influence on the Monsoon Bassoon, and their leader Tim Smith produced their album I Dig Your Voodoo. In a review for the album, NME noted how the "mesh of jumpy woodwind melodies" at the star of the song "Blue Junction" were softened by Torabi's "spooked bark". Since the mid-1990s, Torabi had had a close working relationship with Smith, who produced the majority of the Monsoon Bassoon's recordings.
Despite scoring several Single of the Week awards in New Musical Express, the Monsoon Bassoon failed to get signed to a larger label or make a significant commercial breakthrough, although they did receive critical acclaim and a cult following for their unorthodox approach and sound. The band released a lone, well-regarded studio album and five singles, and split up in 2001 following the exit of Keddie. Many of the band's recordings remain unreleased.
Before the split of the Monsoon Bassoon, Torabi toured as guitarist with former Pogues member Spider Stacy's group, Wisemen. After line-up changes, the group became The Vendettas. Torabi co-wrote and produced an album with Spider in 2003, but the project was shelved in the wake of the Pogues' reunion that year. Torabi has subsequently expressed an interest in releasing the album on his own Believers Roast label.
Other projects
Since the breakup of the Monsoon Bassoon, Torabi has maintained an ongoing musical relationship with Dan Chudley, resulting in several other projects. The first of these was Miss Helsinki, a more straightforward rock band which recorded a couple of tracks and played a few acoustic gigs in 2002. The band failed to find a steady lineup and consequently folded. Torabi, Chudley and Keddie worked together again when they formed another rock band, Authority, in 2005. Authority recorded several songs and played live over the next two years, but never released anything beyond a couple of MySpace uploads. The band split in 2007 due to the various members' other commitments and Chudley's move to Cornwall.Torabi and Chudley have worked on another project together – the instrumental Hatchjaw and Bassett, which Chudley has described as "acoustic spiritual music". This project has not released any records, although a video featuring the duo and their music has appeared on YouTube.
Torabi is a member of Admirals Hard, an occasional "sea-shanty supergroup" made up of members of London math-rock bands and avant-garde folk groups and fronted by singer Andy Carne. Torabi plays mandolin and guitar for the group.
2003–2006: joining Cardiacs, Guapo and North Sea Radio Orchestra, ''The Special Garage Concerts'' by Cardiacs
Torabi rose to prominence as a member of Cardiacs, which featured Torabi as a guitarist and vocalist in later points in the band's career. Prior to becoming a member, Torabi had spent eight years working as the band’s guitar technician. In the early 2000s, Cardiacs guitarist Jon Poole was busy working with the Wildhearts. Tim Smith asked Torabi if he would like to stand in for Poole in his idea for playing the early Cardiacs material that was badly recorded, and Torabi joined the band as second guitarist in 2003. In October 2003, Cardiacs played three consecutive concerts at The Garage in London where they performed more than 33 songs from their early years from 1977 to 1983, Torabi replacing Poole. With a four-piece line-up of Tim Smith, Torabi, Jim Smith and Bob Leith, the best takes from the three-night stand were released in the two-hour 2005 live album The Special Garage Concerts as two different volumes, which the writer Eric Benac called Torabi's "most significant contribution to the band's history". Torabi and Leith were given free rein to do what they wanted with the songs, and Martijn Voorvelt of Perfect Sound Forever noted that learning the songs "must have been particularly hard work" for them as they were not in the original lineup. Dom Lawson of Classic Rock said that the live set "proved to be Cardiacs' last grand gesture as a live band" and that the new line-up featuring Torabi "brought Tim Smith's songs vividly to life in front of a hysterical audience of devotees". Benac noted that Torabi's guitar and arrangement skills added a psychedelic edge to the band's sound.Torabi got a call in 2005 from Dave Smith or Daniel O'Sullivan of the band Guapo, when the band were on Ipecac, that they wanted him as their guitarist. Torabi said that the mid-2000s were "very much a time when bands like Fantomas, Melvins, Sunn O))), Neurosis, seemed to really be happening and Guapo were like, maybe a tier down, so we were always busy." Torabi also played with the North Sea Radio Orchestra, a contemporary chamber music group formed in 2002 by Craig and Sharron Fortnam. He provided accompanying vocals with the North Sea Chorus, and was with them circa 2006.