The Utopia Strong – Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi and Mike York – have announced details of a new album, ‘Doperider’, out via Rocket Recordings on 10th October 2025. Check out the tune ‘Harpies’ from the album HERE.
In celebration of this the trio have announced a 13-date UK tour which includes a Brighton concert at The Hope & Ruin on 17th October courtesy of Love Thy Neighbour promoters – Tickets HERE & HERE.
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 its 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.
Yet more than anything else this remains an evolutionary process. “All the pieces on Doperider began as purely electronic pieces, with Mike and Steve on modular synths and Kavus on an analogue synth” the band relate. “We were deliberately trying to not repeat ourselves and, for this reason, made a point of changing the model a little. Not that we’ve ever been necessarily conventional but I think this album goes a little deeper than the previous two studio albums.”
‘Doperider’ does indeed take the band down a variety of auditory pathways previously unexplored, and further into the realms of more surrealistic visions akin to the systems-built bliss of Caterina Barbieri, the unforgiving noisescapes of Hiro Kone or the alien soundtracks of latter-day Laurie Spiegel. “Certainly, Steve’s listening habits have changed somewhat since the first album, he has gone deeper into abstract electronica and musique concrete as well as becoming increasingly adept with his modular set up. This seems to have formed a backbone to how the music developed” reflects Kavus.
Hence the coruscating intensity of the title track and the elegiac rapture of ‘Unity Of Light’ showcase a still more moving and melancholic approach to their art, alongside the blissful ‘Harpies’, which features the vocals of Katharine Blake (Miranda Sex Garden/Mediaeval Baebes). Elsewhere curveballs strike such as the strident and stentorian curtain-raiser ‘Prophecy’, which utilises the influence of Magma and Zeuhl music – a longstanding passion for all three members – for the first time in earnest. “It sits better at the start of the album as otherwise it would disrupt the decent into the beautiful hell hole that unfolds” as Steve notes.
Essentially however, the mission of The Utopia Strong remains intact – to offer a transformative pathway to wonders anew. “Well, we are making psychedelic music or, if you will, head music” reflects Kavus. “We put an awful lot of detail into each piece. It’s certainly not minimalist. Often after our shows people will remark that we had made them feel like they were on drugs. That’s the idea really. We’ll take you on a voyage of self-discovery that won’t preclude showing up to work on time the next day. Although really the core message of our music is ‘Quit your job and start a commune.”
As Steve notes: “Hopefully we’ve done justice to the comic book character Dope Rider and that he’d have loved riding along on his Harley Davison on another quest, with the wind blowing through his rib cage, listening to this album. If the audience choose the psychonaut road, then we are delighted to have been of service.”
‘Doperider’ is out on vinyl, CD and digitally on 10th October 2025 – Pre-order HERE.
OCTOBER 2025 TOUR (with special guest Andrew Liles):
10 Oct – Bristol, The Cube
11 Oct – Glastonbury, King Arthur
14 Oct – Guildford, Boilerooom
15 Oct – St Albans, The Horn
16 Oct – London, Cafe OTO – SOLD OUT
17 Oct – Brighton, The Hope & Ruin
18 Oct – Ramsgate Music Hall
19 Oct – Tunbridge Wells, Forum
20 Oct – Oxford, The Bullingdon
21 Oct – Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda Basement
22 Oct – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s
23 Oct – Hexham, Allendale Village Hall
24 Oct – Hebden Bridge, Trades Club
Links to all gigs can be found on the right hand side of their Bandcamp page HERE.
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