Live preview: Kula Shaker

The new album isn’t the first one of a reunion that began several years ago, so why call it K 2.0?

**So it’s a sequel? **

I guess you could say so.

For all of the years we’ve worked, then taken time off, then worked again, you realise how much the music has matured. That’s been a pleasant experience.

I’d love things to have been smoother, but we’re complicated people. For us it was always more of a calling than a career. It’s quite a spiritual thing. We can only do this when the timing is right. The band is our grail and we don’t like to bash it about [laughs].

The new music still fuses psychedelia and Indian sounds. Why do you consider the two styles such comfortable bedfellows?

Indian music is based on scales that place you in a whole different world. Mixing it with psychedelia helps you to tap into one’s hidden self; who you are and what really matters.

**You’ve had a tempestuous relationship with the music press. Does doing interviews again feel like placing your head back into the lion’s mouth? **

A little, but these days I’m more in control of myself.

**So how does Crispian, now aged forty, look back on the Crispian who found stardom at half that age? **

He was an interesting fellow, and he dared to throw himself upon the altar of pop. Pop music is all about overturning the apple cart, and he did a bit of that.

Classic Rock 220: News & Regulars

Dave Ling was a co-founder of Classic Rock magazine. His words have appeared in a variety of music publications, including RAW, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Prog, Rock Candy, Fireworks and Sounds. Dave’s life was shaped in 1974 through the purchase of a copy of Sweet’s album ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’, along with early gig experiences from Status Quo, Rush, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Yes and Queen. As a lifelong season ticket holder of Crystal Palace FC, he is completely incapable of uttering the word ‘Br***ton’.