Kula Shaker have a new album coming out on January 30th called Wormslayer. Instead of a standard album-promo interview, I asked Crispian Mills and Jay Darlington to walk through the listening experiences that shaped them — early musical memories, first obsessions, shared influences, and how their relationship to music has changed over time. The conversation resulted in some memorable moments:
“To do music your whole life, you do need to be obsessed… it is like love… you can’t not do it.”
“There’s a slight chaos to it… it felt like it could fall apart at any moment… We love to play right on the edge of our ability.”
One of my favorite threads in this conversation is their idea that psychedelia isn’t only a “sound” or a set of stylistic cues. It’s also a way of moving through life: an openness to discovery, to the sense that art is connected to a larger “quest.” Put differently, the wah-wah and the phaser matter… but so does the mindset. “There’s a difference between the mind-expansion aspect… and the aesthetics… you really need both together.”
The conversation eventually brought us to Kula Shaker’s upcoming album Wormslayer, another chapter in the band’s storied career. I’ve left the interview uninterrupted. After our conversation, I couldn’t resist playing a bit of music: one track from the new record (“Broke As Folk”) , followed by a classic that takes us back to the band’s early era, the extended version of “Tattva”.
