IT JUST FEELS LIKE WE’RE A LITTLE MORE IN CHARGE
A CONVERSATION WITH CRISPIAN MILLS OF KULA SHAKER
Britpop was huge in the ‘90s. Bands like Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass, and The Stone Roses among others, dominated the charts and left a massive imprint on the culture, music, and fashion, not only in the UK, but the whole world. Kula Shaker, a very popular band in the UK during the ’90s, often gets looped into conversations when people talk about Britpop. However, they were quite different from most Britpop bands due to their mixture of psychedelic music and traditional Indian music. Recently, they released “Charge Of The Light Brigade”, their first single for their upcoming album, which is yet to be named.
“You stay the same person your whole life; it’s just whether you get to be slightly more self-aware rather than self-conscious,” comments frontman Crispian Mills. “We all just want to know who we are and be confident about who we are, and I think that the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness is just that you are more in your own skin. I think we are the same band and still have the same ambitions, but it just feels like we’re a little more in charge. Part of that step is being an indie label, and there’s a price to pay. It’s very hard to make it profitable. But you win in the long run creatively. If your fans like it, it’s because you’ve been able to have a closer connection to them. If it doesn’t work, you can say, ‘Well, obviously, it’s because we suck.’”
Kula Shaker’s upcoming album combines what they did with Natural Magick and 1st Congregational Church Of Eternal Love And Free Hugs. “On the last record, Natural Magick, we decided to write really short pop arrangements even though we’re still a rock band,” states Mills. “Before that we did a double album, which was quite conceptual. I think with this album, we’ve fused the band’s big conceptual and instrumental side with our love of pop songs. Even a pop song that’s under three minutes should feel like a musical journey or sonic experience. I like to think that ‘Charge Of The Light Brigade’ has a lot of landscape.”
Having keyboardist/Hammond organist Jay Darlington back in the band, who returned for Natural Magick, has helped shape the sound for their upcoming album. “He came back a couple of years ago, and it just solidified that chemistry of that original lineup,” comments Mills. “His thick psychedelic soup has come back right to the front of what we’re doing. We just doubled down on the psychedelia because we’ve played more than we have in 20 years. We’re playing more live and letting the band jam out a bit more, so the jam psychedelic scene is a bit more embedded into the songwriting.”
Psychedelia has always been a big part of Kula Shaker’s sound and songwriting. “It’s all about breaking from the conventional,” says Mills. “It’s a different way of listening to something, thinking about something, and seeing something. That’s what we need. I think it’s more relevant now than ever because there’s so much pressure on the world’s population that we all have to think, see, or hear the same way. Everything has to be homogenized. We got to enjoy these unique individual experiences of life. Psychedelia really celebrates that, seeing the beauty in something. Plus, for me, it’s the most imaginative of the pop music genres. I get more lost in psychedelia music than I do in any other music.”
The first single released for the upcoming album is “Charge Of The Light Brigade”, and it alludes to spiritual vampires and the fairy cavalcade of Celtic folklore. “It’s about the light and the dark,” says Mills. “Good and love exist in the world, and so do the bad, the dark, and evil. You can’t escape it. Every good story has to reflect that. When I think of spiritual vampires, I think of people with narcissistic personality disorder. It’s this inability to emphasise and view other people as something to exploit and feed off their emotional energy, their pain, and their confusion to try and control them – We encounter these people in our lives, or we become exploited by them, and I think you can find yourself abused by a partner, your boss, or your government and becoming healthy in yourself is the key. The light brigade, the fairies, and all of that life-affirming imagery in the song are all about the resistance to it. That song is about healing.” Kula Shaker also released an entertaining music video for the song. “We all thought it would be fun to dress up as gothic vampires. We’re big fans of The Omen – where we rehearse, there’s this old churchyard that was featured in that film, and we were always looking for an excuse to go in there to film something on camera and goof around in the graveyard from The Omen. We did that, and we made a fool of ourselves.”
KULA SHAKER ANNOUNCE NEW SINGLE “CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE”
Kula Shaker is known for their interest in traditional Indian music, culture, and spirituality, which they incorporate into their music. “Govinda” is sung entirely in Sanskrit and many songs feature traditional Indian instruments like the sitar and tamboura. Initially, the big influence started with the Krishna temples. “Getting open to the idea that meditation and yoga could also be a musically driven experience, that was cool,” says Mills. “I was studying Indian music formerly for a while…. The way they see music in the East – it’s very remarkable. It’s very deep and spiritual music.” Kula Shaker’s love of George Harrison also led them to incorporate traditional Indian music into their music. “We perhaps irreverently started chucking it in our music because we love George Harrison. George is the king, and he did it respectfully even though a lot of people criticized him too while he was doing it and criticized Ravi Shankar for helping him.”
The upcoming album is also influenced by traditional Indian music, culture, and spirituality. “That’s all part of our worldview,” comments Mills. “Sometimes our music doesn’t sound that Indian, but it is still being infused with some kind of experience of Indian music. On this one, there’s a few more obvious references and sounds.”
Kula Shaker’s debut album K was a huge success in the UK and spawned many hit songs, including “Hey Dude”, “Govinda”, “Grateful When You’re Dead”, and “Tattva”. It was one of the highest-selling albums in the UK in 1996. “We were talking about it the other night on the tour bus, and we’re still trying to remember and make sense of everything that happened,” reflects Mills. “We were really swimming upstream in terms of what we were about and the vibe we were giving off. It was very different from Britpop – we were really into the spiritual thing and the psychedelic thing. It was quite the opposite of Britpop. We did a lot of work in a short space of time on that first record that was completely at headlocks with everything else. It was pretty exhausting, to be honest. It left us burned out. That’s why the second record we did, Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, we wanted to do a big conceptual rock opera.”
Mills has also directed the movies Slaughterhouse Rulez and A Fantastic Fear Of Everything. He has lots of family involved in the movie business, including his father, director Roy Boulting and his mother, actress Hayley Mills. “I’ve always been around movies because my family made movies, and my Dad was a filmmaker and also a musician, so when I started making films, it was an inevitable transition,” he comments. “It’s very similar to making records in terms of the whole creative development, but the big difference is raising money for a film is so much harder and takes longer…. I found it really tough, but I was very lucky to work with great actors and great camera people – Simon Pegg is a good friend. Margot Robbie did a cameo in Slaughterhouse Rulez. I was really lucky to get some cool people.”
Down the road, Mills might make another film. “I’m always making movies in my head,” he smiles. “I had to stop doing music to make films. I need to find a way for the film and music to work together. That way, it’s not so dangerous. It’s very dangerous to stop working. I’ve got family. I can’t afford to be a high-stakes gambler like that unless my kids want to live in the back of a trailer with me. But I think that a musical film is likely.”
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Main Photo Credit: Nicole Frobusch
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