The Witching Tale & Kavus Torabi (Gong)

In The Witching Tale’s second studio album, ‘What Magic Is This?’, duo
Katharine Blake (Mediaeval Baebes, Miranda Sex Garden) and Michael York
(Current 93, Coil, The Utopia Strong, Teleplasmiste) concoct an intoxicating aural
elixir that is equal parts menace and wonder.

Lyrics on the album’s 9 tracks are Blake’s own and follow the arc of her interests
and obsessions, making it a more personal outing than the first. York’s masterful
meld of traditional and electronic instrumentation continues and expands upon
the first album’s genre-defying signature sound.

The opening track, ‘They Will Come’, blurs dreams and extra-terrestrial
visitations in what sounds like a guided meditation gone very wrong. “I had a
dream where parasitic aliens came to earth but could only feed on us in our
sleep,” explains Blake. More prophetic warning than imminent terror, the sci-fi
horror subtext belies the song’s haunting beauty.

In ‘Neverending’, York’s brightly animated, mercurial synthesiser is dappled
starlight on a babbling brook, looping endlessly behind Blake’s musings on the
perpetual circle of life. This metaphysical theme returns later in ‘Everlasting’, a
more pensive treatment that makes a nod to both the Emerald Tablet of occult
lore as well as a more scientific, fatalist cosmology.

Long a fan of the horror genre, Blake summons up scenes of ritual sacrifice at
the altar of a fire goddess in ‘Within Her Flame’. Will the initiates be granted
eternal youth in the flames, or simply become fuel for the pyre? (If the band have
a mood board, the Red Woman in Game of Thrones is surely on it, along with
Ursula Andress in the 60s horror classic ‘She’.) The same goddess hovers
menacingly in the background of ‘Floralia’, its sunny chorus and playful pipes
spiriting us through the rites of an ancient fertility cult – but how will it end?
Echoes of Eno and Vangelis reverberate in the corners of songs like ‘Indigo’ and
‘Born In a Moment Again’. The former imagines the chants of a future post-apocalyptic society of blind people, while the latter is a dramatic reverie on time and possibility – and a sweeping centrepiece for the album.

Blake’s youngest daughter Rosa lends her treetop-high vocals to ‘MerriCall’, a
folk horror nursery rhyme personifying the seasons (“Knowing that all things must
die, Autumn sings a lullaby”). Sarah Kayte Foster, a former member of Blake’s
musical collective Mediaeval Baebes, also provides lush backing vocals
throughout.

The title track closes ‘What Magic Is This?’, with Blake’s voice so lonely she
could be an astronaut singing from orbit, or a witch whose broom flew too high.
Looking down at the shared lives of humanity, she sees a fabric held together by
threads of wonder and bewilderment. The hum in the background might be a
satellite, or the distant music of the spheres.

So much of The Witching Tale’s sound hovers in that ambiguous region of space.
At times the low-key, haunting atmospherics evoke a forgotten, enchanted grotto
– but is it beneath Tintagel or on some far-flung planet? Perhaps it’s
simultaneously both, a portal that leads to both the distant past beneath us and a
future in the void far above. An escape from the horrors and banalities of now as
much as an invocation to somehow unhex them.

You’ll have to cross that threshold to experience the magic therein. Just don’t
step into the flames…

Kavus Torabi is a British/ Iranian composer, multi-instrumentalist, performer,
author, artist, broadcaster and DJ. His largely autobiographical solo work
marries the human with the celestial. Since 2016 he has fronted legendary psychedelic band Gong with whom he is principal songwriter. He is a member of the semi-modular experimental/psychedelic trio The Utopia Strong. He is a former guitarist of British cult band, Cardiacs and avant rock instrumentalists Guapo. As part of a a DJ duo with Steve Davis, he has performed festivals throughout the UK, recently performing at Wembley Stadium between bands for Blur’s comeback
performance. In 2021 White Rabbit published, Medical Grade Music, his memoir with Steve Davis which was Shindig’s music book of the year. In April 2024 his commissioned piece ‘Lion Of The Lord’s Elect’ made its debut at Roadburn Festival, NE.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult