Kavus Torabi
The Banishing

It was one o'clock in the morning when, suddenly struck by hunger, Kavus Torabi ate an apple. It came from something like paradise, and thanks to the tangible reality of that fruit, he quickly regained his physical body.

It was five past one on October 22 and I was also eating an apple. A sort of lunch break matter, sitting on a bench sweetened by a mild sun. I wasn't coming from paradise, but I was alright, like a pea in its pod, as someone used to say.

However, there's a law that says you can hide at the ends of the earth, but you'll always find a pest, and indeed here's the paradigmatic and sordid Bisazzi in front of my eyes coming up with one of his judgments: "I prefer pears to apples, I imagine you understand why."

Well, the fact that you can't even have peace during your lunch break is proof of this world's unstoppable decline. My immediate reply was a vain and pale satisfaction: "Oh Bisazzi, it seems to me that you haven't eaten pears in a while"...

And anyway, I'll tell you that this Bisazzi is a mountain of a nurse and also my colleague at the nursing home where I entertain the elderly with a verve that's out of this world. He, on the other hand, goes around being the ultimate jerk, not to mention he's also a huge fascist: "Romagna has only one pride, the thriving town of Predappio," you get the type?

So it won't be surprising that we've been skirmishing for a while, the latest just yesterday, as I arrived in my car with blasting music, none other than "Flying Teapot" by Gong, admittedly not something for the masses.

"What is this crap you're listening to?" he asks, so I go on to explain and seriously say: "Here, oh Bisazzi, we're talking about wise little green men flying around in teapots." "You seem a bit too out there," he replies, and I answer, "You, on the other hand, are a bit too little out there, so I don't know who's worse off between us," and satisfied, I leave him there dull and downcast.

The reason for the satisfaction was also that Antonova there present gave me a smile, like when the sun comes out. Can you still say drop-dead gorgeous without incurring sexist offenses? If so, then I say it. Moreover, the smile was for me, even if I don't have the courage to speak to her, too beautiful she is, a bit too old I am. It doesn't matter if the tarot cards have predicted that she's the high priestess and I'm the fool, a match that fits quite well.

Anyway, going back to apples, now I'll offer you my very modest inventory, music, emotions, purity, feelings. So, following a random order, here you have Donatella's apple pie, Rimbaud from "sweeter than a child the flesh of the acid apples," "Apples and oranges," the second 45 of Floyd as beautiful as the first and the first was Emily.

If that's not enough, I'll add Eva Kant cast out of paradise, the red cheeks of her beautiful face, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and the fact that with apples, grandma made fritters, which, although they don't grow on trees, surely exist in paradise.

If you think I'm mocking you, you're off track. Sure, like scrappy thoughts and free words, my apples are nothing but hot air, but Kavus's apple, well Kavus's apple is quite a respectable fruit, and soon the reason will become clear to you too.

But now, not to irritate you too much, I better move on to the actual review, avoiding, as I would have liked, talking to you about Snow White or the little worm that usually takes up residence in the apple. The fact is that some records are like laughing gas and lead to delirium even in the most sane bipeds.

...

It's nice that albums like this still come out, three-quarters psych, one-quarter Canterbury + a sprinkle of cosmic powder to taste. Then, to be even clearer, I go beyond four-three-three or four-three-two-one and name names: Xtc, Syd, Robyn, Cleaners from Venus, the Julian Cope of Fried, Caravan, Hatfield and the North. A bliss, in short, and a death of which we have already died a thousand times. Stuff that you have everything, except perhaps for a nymph, the great female dreaming being, namely Our Lady Antonova, a wonder of nature and head nurse. Nymph or not, however, we have Kavus and we have his apple, shiny, green, dazzling…

Kavus who is not a spring chicken, is over fifty and is a kind of underground hero. Half Iranian and half English, he has a curriculum full of albums, collaborations, bands, a really vast repertoire. Among other things, he was a member of the Cardiacs and is still the leader of the latest incarnation of Gong, the band that from my car has assaulted the ears of the unfortunate Bisazzi.

Well, I know nothing about any of this stuff produced, not even about the last version of Gong. But it's the same old story or usual spiel that us mad music devotees undergo, where we discover that a certain Whatshisname has churned out a magnificent record like this "The Banishing" and then we find out he's made like another 455 albums. Good luck, poor ears of ours.

And anyway, what a pleasure this record, what good mood: suspended time, odd things, floating anarchy, cosmic gusts. Even if then, good mood my foot, considering the theme is the psychic collapse, but then again, the rule to turn crap into gold always applies, the abyss butterfly cares just enough since it can fly away. And what is more butterfly than this music?

Not to mention that Kavus made me smile, in difficulty with the text of the hyper cosmic track, the one where there really is an almost sacred energy that caresses you. What does he do? Well, he takes a heroic dose of lsd, kind of like Rimbaud's phenomenal gulp of poison, and what happens what everyone says, out goes the ego, out goes the trash, "cosmic spring cleaning" as smartly said by a guy online.

The trip lasts eleven hours and, you know, after eleven hours you get hungry. It's one o'clock at night and Kavus sees an apple...

The rest you already know...