Kula Shaker are best known for the 1996 multi platinum 'K', which became one of the fastest selling UK debuts ever. Now, after a six-year absence, Kula have returned with the brilliant album 'Strangefolk'. Produced in collaboration with an all-star team of hit makers & Grammy winners, including Tchad Blake (Peter Gabriel, Crowded House), Sam Williams (Supergrass) and Chris Sheldon (The Foo Fighters, The Pixies), 'Strangefolk' consists of 13 songs that hurl themselves through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, echoing with voices of protest and imagination.
It's been 10 years since Kula Shaker first dropped in on the British music scene. In hindsight, it's probably to their credit that Kula Shaker didn't fit in with the 90s lad-pack. They didn't go in for 'lad culture'. No, it was the dawn of the new Millennium, and Kula Shaker had risen early for some kind of psychedelic breakfast with Krishna and George Harrison. The band's love of classic rock, and their devotion to full blown mysticism, encapsulated in the Top-5 single 'Tattva' (a Sanskrit aphorism meaning 'the inconceivable oneness & difference of reality'), won them ardent fans and enemies in equal measure, but their brilliant live performances earned them an unquestioned reputation as one of Britain's most exciting bands and a musical force to be reckoned with.
After 6 years of silence, and a lot of water under the creaky old bridge, Kula Shaker is once more alive and kicking. Lead singer & protagonist Crispian Mills ponders the time gap, "In many ways, I think the world is a much more exciting place than it was 10 years ago. War, oppression, mass communication, ridiculously skinny jeans, that's what rock n' roll thrives on." In 2006 the band created their own label in preparation for 'Strangefolk'. "We were inspired to make another album. The time was right," muses Mills, "It's a time for musical independence, the power is going back to the artists. It's up to each of us what we make of the opportunity."
'Strangefolk' features the original line up, (Crispian Mills, vocals/gtr, Alonza Bevan, Bass, and Paul Winter Hart, drums) with the addition of Harry Broadbent taking over on Hammond organ.
After a number of live dates, the band were back in the studio in 2009 putting the finishing touches on their fourth album entitled 'Pilgrims Progress'.
The sounds are good and spirits are high. "This is the one" says Alonza, "I'm high as a kite." And so it is, that the band prepare to emerge from the shadows. To once more don the humble sack cloth of pilgrims, to carry the good name of King KulaSekhara upon their heads.
And the great King himself watches on, preparing to spin the wheel of fortune one more time.
God Bless the KING!
