Maximum Break

Progressive music’s unlikeliest trio are back with a new studio album. The Utopia Strong’s Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi and Michael J York tell Prog how Timothy Leary, experiments on a discounted Chinese guzheng, and a sports promoter accidentally led to the creation of their second official release, International Treasure.

Words: Jeremy Allen

”We know our music and know how the band works now, so [a second album] seemed perfectly reasonable and perfectly natural.”Kavus Torabi The Utopia Strong have come a long way since inadvertently forming four years ago. The most unlikely trio since the Holy Trinity didn’t even realise they were becoming a band when they descended on musician Michael J York’s home in Glastonbury in January 2018 for a modular synth jam. Crucially, the trio left a tape recorder running throughout their marathon 13-hour session, and on returning from an extended sojourn to the pub, discovered – much to their surprise – that it all sounded rather good. Tentatively, a musical formation began to occur, though there was something odd about this group. Kavus Torabi and York had plenty of previous experience in…

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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 131

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