Kavus Torabi (born 5 December 1971) 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. Rising to prominence as a member of Cardiacs, Torabi has fronted the progressive rock band Gong since 2014 and led the band Knifeworld from 2009 to 2018. He has since been active as a solo artist and one-third of the electronic band the Utopia Strong.
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 (1999) was produced by Tim Smith, the leader of Cardiacs. Torabi worked as Cardiacs' guitar technician for eight years and, after the breakup of the Monsoon Bassoon, replaced Jon Poole as second guitarist and vocalist for three shows in 2003 performing the band's early material captured on the live album The Special Garage Concerts (2005). Torabi wrote the words for the 2007 single "Ditzy Scene", his first Cardiacs studio work, and was a member when the band went into an indefinite hiatus in 2008 due to Smith experiencing neurological problems following a cardiac arrest. Knifeworld, with Melanie Woods as Torabi's co-singer, carried forward Cardiacs' melodic, complex type of music. Five years after Smith's death, LSD was released in 2025 as the only Cardiacs studio album with Torabi.
With the snooker player Steve Davis, Torabi co-presented the radio show The Interesting Alternative Show on Phoenix FM between 2010 and 2018 and has DJ'd at events. Through the show, Torabi was introduced to Gong founder Daevid Allen by Davis and joined Gong as an additional guitarist, debuting on the 2014 album I See You. Due to Allen's cancer, from which Allen died in 2015, Gong continued with Torabi as frontman and principal songwriter, releasing the studio albums Rejoice! I'm Dead! (2016), The Universe Also Collapses (2019), Unending Ascending (2023) and Bright Spirit (2026). Torabi's first solo venture, the EP Solar Divination, was released in 2018, followed by the solo albums Hip to the Jag (2020), The Banishing (2024) and October by Name (2026). Torabi and Davis also co-founded the Utopia Strong with Michael J. York in 2018, and wrote the joint autobiography Medical Grade Music (2021).
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 about 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,Metal Archives – Die Laughing in which he played guitar and first met his close friend and collaborator, Dan Chudley. (Chudley – a fellow guitarist and singer – has been part of Torabi's life for most of his musical career, and the two are noted for their interlocking, highly complex guitar style.) 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 (singing clarinet/flute/sax player Sarah Measures and drummer Jamie Keddie). 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."
In the mid-90s, Torabi met Tim Smith, the leader of Cardiacs. Cardiacs were a major influence on the Monsoon Bassoon, and Smith produced their album I Dig Your Voodoo (1999). 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 (I Dig Your Voodoo) 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 (which also featured other ex-Pogues). 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 (if interrupted) 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 (despite assistance from Richard Larcombe from Stars In Battledress and from Monsoon Bassoon drummer Jamie Keddie) and consequently folded. Torabi, Chudley and Keddie worked together again when they formed another rock band, Authority, in 2005 (the lineup was completed by Craig Fortnam of North Sea Radio Orchestra on bass). 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 (Stars in Battledress, Tunng, Max Tundra, Foe and The Monsoon Bassoon) and fronted by singer Andy Carne. Torabi plays mandolin and guitar (and sings backing vocals) 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.