Black / White Marbled. Catalog Number: BR32 Color: White Format: LP UPC: 803341601536 Who's to say if we're to believe Pablo Picasso's theory that "art washes away from the soul the dust from everyday life", However, only a fool would deny the simple processes of guitar string to amplifier or microphone to magnetic tape/WAV file can be more than merely a hobby or an idle pastime. This is a cathartic endeavour that reflects and refracts the daily joys and tribulations to elevate and elucidate. Such is the case with the second solo album by Kavus Torabi, The Banishing. "I started recording The Banishing at much the same time as my previous album, Hip To The Jag was released, which was essentially at the beginning of lockdown in Spring 2020" relates Kavus. "The original intent had been to make a record that was not as obviously personal and autobiographical as the first. I wanted to make a positive, uplifting album." "The following two years saw what I can only describe as a descent into psychosis. My relationship with my family broke down and became completely dysfunctional and it became necessary for me to leave our home and ultimately London, where I had lived for the previous thirty years." These had been three decades that had seen Kavus develop a reputation as a psychedelic polymath - a mercurial figure with a voracious appetite for new creative adventures whose energies always seemed ready to expand in myriad directions at any given time. The Banishing represents the sound of a maverick artist using their creative process as not only a bulwark against psychic oppression but a transformative force to guide them through life. Far from merely banishing the dust of the everyday, it's a psychic spring-clean that renders the world anew, a journey that opens more doors than it closes. Yet throughout his storied journey, his muse has remained intact - an ever-expanding and kaleidoscopic meld of rich melody and surreal rhythmic constructs that joins the cosmic dots between the psychedelic legacies of Syd Barrett and Robyn Hitchcock escorting them somewhere freshly invigorating and entirely his own.