FEVER DREAMS AND FAIRY TALES: CRISPIAN MILLS ON THE SPIRIT OF KULA SHAKER

Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker has the dreaded man-flu, he’s a little spaced, but still sharp, warm, and unmistakably himself. “I haven’t called the paramedics yet.” Before anything else, he pauses, searching his memory. “Have we met before? I feel like we have.” A beat later, recognition lands. “Sheffield City Hall… upstairs, wasn’t it?” I recall,“Ah, yes, that’s it.”

Even under the weather, he’s present and engaged, ready to talk about the band’s most ambitious work in years, in new album “Wormslayer”.

The conversation starts with Lucky Number, the track chosen to lead the album’s rollout, though it wasn’t meant to be. “We just kept recording,” he says, leaning into the thought. “Even after the album was finished, we kept going, trying to beat what we already had. Sometimes it’s good fun to try and beat the best of what you’ve got.”

The song arrived quickly, almost fully formed. “Lucky Number came straight out of the gate. It really popped. It was exciting.”

Its origins are humble, a cheap sixties catalogue guitar he picked up in Manchester while touring with Ocean Colour Scene. “It was cheap and nasty, but it had something about it. Sometimes a guitar inspires you to play a certain way. I wrote Lucky Number on that thing. I loved playing it, it had something about it” When he played it to the band, the reaction was instant. “One of those instant songs. You play it to the band, and they get it. That’s always a good sign. Everyone understands it straight away, and you’re off to the races.”

Patterns, cosmic, lyrical, and symbolic, have always circled Crispian writing, and he reflects on how those threads reappear across the new album.“Sometimes you get lyrical patterns or stories weaving through a bunch of songs. You don’t notice it until the end. I realised there were a lot of songs about money, or lack of money, and what it means to you.”

He doesn’t shy away from the wider context. “The world is kind of bankrupt in many respects. Everything is built on debt and a system that’s broken, regardless of the propaganda. Most of it is crap. None of this is real.”

That sense of collapse and renewal seeped into the writing.“Broke As Folk is about not just being broke, but something being broken. Your old way of seeing the world, the old way of being… it needs to change or be healed.”

Another thread runs through the record, the wing boy, a mythic figure woven into the album’s storytelling. “That whole fairy tale has woven its way through the album. It’s a combination of facing evil… and being broke,” he adds, amused by the contrast.

Capturing the band’s live energy in the studio has always been a challenge, one they’ve wrestled with since the beginning. “We’re a messy tband, that’s part of the excitement. We tend to be playing right on the edge of our ability. The tension, the push and pull between players… that’s what makes it alive.” But the studio demands something different.

“You need to be focused and disciplined. The contradiction is trying to maintain that wildness while being disciplined enough to get it down. It’s not a gig, it’s a completely different experience.”

This time, though, something clicked. “We managed to achieve a live performance and chemistry that’s been difficult to capture our whole career. It’s taken us our whole careers to find a way to do that.”

He credits the people around them, too. “We had a great engineer and producer, Peter Miles, who helped us. Songs like Charge of the Light Brigade… he really helped us get them down.”

Psychedelia has long been part of the band’s identity, but for Crispian, it’s more than a sound.“It’s about ideas rather than a cosmetic style. Not clothes, not even the way it sounds. It’s about breaking out of your normal way of thinking. Expanding your horizons. A psychedelic experience is a breakthrough, dramatic, not gradual. He sees it everywhere. “You can have psychedelic art, psychedelic books. Sometimes it’s a lyric that makes a track feel psychedelic because it takes you out of your normal way of looking at the world.”

“Spirituality is about a relationship where you’re connected to something greater than yourself.”
“The highest relationships are the most loving, the most personal.”

Eastern influences and spiritual threads have always coloured Kula Shaker’s work. Though he’s never labelled himself a Buddhist, the connection is unmistakable. “India is like the mother culture. The root from which all these other traditions have grown.”

He draws parallels across traditions. “When you get into old Celtic magic, the way they viewed the world as the mother, the relationship with the natural world… It’s the same in so many traditions. Spirituality is about a relationship where you’re connected to something greater than yourself. In its highest form, it’s nurturing and loving.” He sees spirituality the way he sees music, “Different textures, different colours. They offer different experiences. But it’s all music.”

The industry has changed dramatically since the K days, and Crispian doesn’t sugarcoat it.“The old world is gone. Completely. You can’t sell albums the way you used to. You have to go on the road. You have to commit fully. Not everyone can do that.”

“Albums make a difference, but they can’t sustain an industry anymore.”

But there’s a silver lining. “It pushes you to be more personal, more connected. A deeper connection with the audience, that’s the key.” Algorithms, though, are another matter. “I don’t enjoy it. People have to overcome that and make sure it only becomes a tool, not something that dictates their lives.”

With the band’s Liquid Light Show selling out in Brighton and London, fans can expect new material to sit comfortably alongside classics. “The test of new songs is whether they work next to the classics. We tried Brokers Folk on tour with Ocean Colour Scene, and it went down really well. We’re confident with this record.”

More live sessions are planned for later in the year, and a filmed show from Los Angeles, complete with the alchemist light show, is on the way. “That’ll be available shortly,” he says.

As for what he hopes listeners take from the album, he smiles.“When you release new music, it’s not yours anymore. People make their own meaning and are going to compare it to albums you’d never thought of. I gave up a long time ago expecting anyone to hear it the way I want them to. What matters is the spirit.”

“We’re all fans of fans. Sometimes you want to see a band really dig into the new album if it’s good.”

Even feeling unwell, he’s generous, reflective, and quietly proud of the work. “I hope you’ve got everything you need,” he says before signing off, and the music, as always, speaks for itself.

Kula Shaker’s forthcoming album “Wormslayer” is set for release on 30 January.