Kula Shaker’s debut album K, released in 1996, went to number one and outsold Elastica’s debut from the year before in its first week, selling 105,768 copies the UK. They were properly massive. And yet they decided to call it a day three years later after recording their ambitious second album Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts on David Gilmour’s studio boat and costing their record label close to a million pounds in the process. Why? The band were stressed; much of the press loathed them—a feeling not helped by a defence of the swastika as an Indian symbol of good luck by frontman Crispian Mills; the band truly followed and explored the spiritual dialectics of their music and found the corporate machinery of a major label impossible to align with. So it was that the band disbanded before coming back in the mid-noughties. Not only have they stayed the course since then, they are more prolific than ever. Next year they will be releasing their third album in as many years, Wormslayer, coinciding with more tour dates.
To learn how Indian spirituality aligns with psychedelic rock, get the gossip on thirty years in the industry, and find out what the 90s British press can do to the psyche of a young man, I speak to Alonza Bevan. Alonza comes to me from South Belgium, where parts of their new album Worm Slayer were recorded. Alonza played with Kula Shaker from the beginning, peeling off to work with Johnny Marr in his band The Healers during the break before rejoining Kula Shaker in the mid-noughties, and has been with them since.
New record, new tour: are you nervous or excited? Do you worry about reviews, or do you take it all in your stride now?
It’s always exciting. At the moment though, I’m still in shock that we’ve recorded and put out three albums in the last three years. Back in the day the structure wasn’t there to be able to do that, to allow us to be as prolific.
Do you feel there is a psychedelic revival happening? Have you seen anything to suggest you might be part of a burgeoning scene?
It’s hard to tell with the internet. You see so many pockets of activity, it’s hard to understand whether happenings are connected. Psychedelia will never go away. There have always been pockets of psychedelic subcultures. Even in the 1980s you had these psychedelic movements going against the mainstream.
On your new record I hear Black Keys in the blues singsong chorus of track one, and the spoken outro on track two reminds me of “The Overload” by Yard Act. Which contemporary acts are you listening to?
I am the worst person to ask that to. I’m terrible with band names. I heard a great Moroccan psych band the other day, but I can’t remember their name.
You performed “Tatva”—a Sanskrit word meaning reality, truth and thatness—on Top of the Pops the same night that the Spice Girls sang “2 Become 1.” Do you think the 90s were a more spiritual time?
No, not at all. There was boy-band raise-your-hands-in-the-air stuff. I actually think now people are much more aware of good and evil. Touring Europe and America, there is a feeling that these times we are in are a battle between good and evil, and spirituality helps you think about what’s wrong and what’s right. The 90s was more nihilistic; we would have been mocked for saying we had deep feelings about things.
You’ve said before that you wanted to get the live act established before you recorded new music again. Why was that?
Playing old songs live, they become fresh again. You realise you did things in songs when you try to relearn them. We were relearning “Hush” the other day and started noticing little bits of drumming that we hadn’t noticed before.
What was it like recording your second record on Dave Gilmour’s studio boat?
Painful for our bank accounts. We were there for half a year. We’d heard Fleetwood Mac had spent a lot on a record, so we wanted to do that. It was a nice spot in Hampton, near where I grew up. They had all this ancient equipment that cost a fortune. But yes, mainly expensive—we had the orchestras in, though not in the boat. On the last day the accountant called up and said we’d spent about three quarters of a million.
What’s the vibe with your fans these days? Are they a spiritual lot, or do they just come for the rock and roll?
A mixed bunch. Some old hippies came in the 90s; a lot of people now and over the years have connected with it through trauma. Music is a good medicine; it has a healing power. People are more tuned in to mindfulness now, and so they can connect to it that way. There are some mad-for-it, just there to have a good time, which is always great. On the last tour an old American told us we were playing the blues, which I guess was a compliment.
What were you feeling about music when the band broke up in 1999, and how is that different to how you feel now?
Well, I’m twice the age now. We were just kids back then, and it was traumatic going through all that so young. It only took Top of the Pops back then to make you a success. One minute we were signing on and getting our dole money, looking for pub gigs, and then we were on Top of the Pops. Mark Radcliffe and Chris Evans were big supporters too; that helped. The British press were awful though. I think a lot of them were old punks and we were hippies, and they hated us. Back then I didn’t know what a sociopath was, and the music industry is full of them. Now I know not to bother, but back then we just didn’t know.
After speaking with Alonza, I thought about the commerce of culture and fun and the band’s early aversion to it. To my mind, the moral of the Kula Shaker story is that labels are useful for introducing you to an audience, but if you are able to and want your sanity intact, then it’s wise to go your own way once you’ve established an audience. Sadly, the Kula Shaker blueprint is not one that all bands can follow. As was pointed out by the press in the 90s, the band has a uniquely privileged support blanket: raised in Richmond, London, attending private schools; frontman Crispian was the child of TV stars and grandchild of BAFTA-winning actor Sir John Mills. The privilege and the spirituality irked the British press: a contradictio in adjecto; a spirituality understood as a byproduct of privileged frollicking and not through kneeling, drinking transubstantiated wine, and fingering rosemary beads. The hard truth though is that we need the privileged to open our minds sometimes, because they have more capital and free time for trips to India than we do.
While Kula Shaker’s start in life was bathetic, they have shown perseverance and savviness in reforming on their own terms. Their new album Wormslayer continues to explore themes of spirituality with their trademark blend of atavistic sitar and Deep Purple–esque riffs. The group have earned a loyal fan base around the world through touring and the heft of a major label promoting them early on. And who knows—perhaps next, through the necromantic powers of the internet, Kula Shaker may find new and younger audiences. Perhaps they may even be a feature of a nascent psychedelic movement.
Wormslayer will be released 30th January 2026 and can be pre-ordered on their website along with tickets for their tour this year.
Interview by Patrick Malone
Photo by Sandrita Cardenas
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