Kula Shaker

Named after a 9th century Indian saint and poet king, Kula Shaker have always existed in an alternate reality. Emerging amid Britpop’s lad-culture swagger, they appeared like a luminous anomaly, flooded with Sanskrit, sitars and psychedelic feedback. Fronted by the spiritually restless Crispian Mills on guitar, alongside Jay Darlington’s soaring Hammond Organ and Paul Winter Hart and Alonza Bevan’s thundering rhythm section grounding the cosmic swirl, the band fused British psychedelia with eastern mysticism into an unexpected counter-narrative. Inspired singles like ‘Tattva' (meaning: the inconceivable, simultaneous oneness and difference of reality), and arguably their best-known single ‘Govinda’ which was sung entirely in Sanskrit, sent their debut album ‘K’ (1996) multi platinum worldwide. In the wake of further hits, ‘Hush’, ‘Mystical Machine Gun’ and ‘Shower Your Love’, from their epic millennium concept ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’, (1999) leading all the way up to recent critically acclaimed albums, ‘Natural Magick’ (2024) and ‘Wormslayer’ (2025), Kula Shaker still enjoy a reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting live bands, with a legacy of staying one step ahead of convention. “Great bands have a life of their own. It exists beyond the individuals,” says Crispian. “We’re just passengers, watching it happen in real-time.” Kula Shaker remains a band that never abandoned wonder, or the belief that music can be more than sound. It can be spirit.