The Utopia Strong – The Utopia Strong

Rocket

Composed of British-Iranian musician and composer Kavus Torabi (of Knifeworld, Guapo, Gong and Cardiacs fame), Coil and Téléplasmiste’s Michael J York, and Steve Davis (yes, snooker’s number one of yore, now fully bewitched by all things modular), The Utopia Strong‘s self-titled debut LP is a light and airy piece of work.

Theirs is an embryonic exploration with an appreciation of Cluster‘s tune-leeching lactose and a slight kosmische kiss to its eel(ing) curves. I was expecting something wholly motorik, pumped to the nines in commerciality, but was pleasantly surprised to experience a bunch of ideas that are happy finding their own narrative.

The weevilling magnetics of “Emerald Tablet” and the building trajectories of “Konta Chorus” both demonstrate a lovely crafted vibe. The sun-dappled contours of the first chorusing in lush swiping motions, the latter chewing on trippy melodics and keystroke ascends that are begging for an ’80s type of twelve-inch EP kitchen sink remix. The deftness of touch here is impressive, the palette a delicate array of colour jivering in soft melodic interjection.

The tentacled anemone of “Swimmers” dancing a glacier in pointy shoes, its percussive kinks like the sound of a chalky surface hitting hard spherical objects (a throwback to the green baize, maybe) scything into watery textures and an undulatory lamplight. Imaginary shapes bouncing within a glistening surface that tease and ebb away from your attention.

Loving the sketchbook nature at play, the way it suddenly opens up with a polished nugget of electronica. The fleeting mysterium that is “Unquiet Boundary “is a suspense of sinistering shapes and sine whorls, dearly needing more time to develop before being eclipsed by the noir explosiveness of “Transition To The Afterlife”. Here there is a radiant ambience, scooping into the hallucinatory pick and mix, as a slight Seefeel elastication gropes for the celestial and its twisty shapes and slipping horizontals are boxing-gloved from side to side.

The brief tetracycline dribble of “Pickman’s Model” grabs hold of you in Delia Derbyshire blooms, leading you to the ten-minute centrepiece of “Brainsurgeons 3”, a pumping neurochemical spin-a-thon complete with corrosive bagpipe crows and guitar comedowns. A great euphoric experience coming a close second to the pecussive Jon Hassell-like blur of “Do You Believe In Two Gods”, the most Téléplasmiste-sounding exploration of the album. It’s full of teetering tribals and wormy serration, all repetitives exploding in synth blisters and shadowy doubles that could have easily gone on for another fifteen minutes. The Utopia Strong instead chooses to ease you out with the gentle chorals of “Moonchild” on a harmonium hum with ghostings of the voice of Katharine Blake from Mediaeval Bæbes, an otherness diaphanously floating between the speakers, drifting its sweet distance to inevitable silence.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-