“SONG FOR EWE” is the feature where artists & music people beloved by VELVET SHEEP choose an obscure song they’ve been listening to that day. Today it’s an intense triple header, with an interesting brand new synth psych band called The Utopia Strong with its trio of esteemed members choosing a tune each. They consist of Steve Davis who has swapped the baize of his legendary snooker past for the 1s and 2s (by which I don’t mean a red and then a yellow), his partner-in-crime behind the decks Kavus Torabi (Gong/Cardiacs/Knifeworld/Guapo) and  the well-appointed Michael J. York (Coil/ Teleplasmiste/Guapo). The music is mesemerising, modular and magnificent, like The Heads meets John Carpenter, via John Carpenter and Loop and it’s on Rocket Recordings home of Teeth of the Sea (whose Mike Bourne introduced Steve to the modular synth), Gnod and VS favs Lay Llamas. Steve has truly gone from Snooker Loopy to Loop, snooker god to disciple of Gnod – and in Kavus Torabi has found a spiritual touchstone that nobody could have seen coming and that I can see going for miles and miles, as the Byrds might have said once. With York making up a trippy triumvirate if The Utopia Strong with their sometimes sinister, sometimes euphoric sweeps are not doing a Mogwai and scoring the next Les Revenants I’ll eat my hat. Not only has each of them chosen an imperious song each, they’ve also told highly cultured tales, so it’s an absolute pleasure to welcome to VS, The Utopia Strong! Steve and Kavus began hanging out in DJ booths after Steve’s retirement from snooker in 2016. Steve was already a massive music head having infamously single handedly promoted three nights at the Bloomsbury Theatre for French esoteric leviathans Magma so frustrated was he about their absence from the UK and he was mega into soul, jazz-funk and progressive rock from the seventies onwards, as happy with a needle on a turntable as with a cue on the table. With a kindred spirit in Kavus, Steve’s attention to detail and precision was focused on an expanding musical collection of experimental electronica and he could fully indulge as he began to accompany Kavus, whose Knifeworld work was totally up his strasse, in DJing at festivals all over, where he’d just as likely spin Autechre as Black Sabbath. It was while playing at Glastonbury in 2017, the pair hung out with local luminary York, and the idea for The Utopia Strong was born, with the name coming later – an interstellar moniker for a wilfully wonky, soaring satellite of kosmiche psych. But with the trio having tip top taste and impeccable record collections what interplanetary nuggets will they choose to share with the Sheep? These are records that have very much made up the embryos of the band’s existence. Without further ado, these are The Utopia Strong’s illuminating “song(s) for ewe”… Michael J York’s choice: Albert Marcoeur – Se Souvenir, Verbe Pronominal from the album Ma Vie Avec Elles I first heard the music of Albert Marcoeur at Steve’s house on the evening of New Years Day 2018, all three of us had got together earlier in the day to do a radio show and when we got back Kavus and Steve suggested we listen to Ma Vie Avec Elles. From the moment it started I was absolutely captivated by this astonishingly complex, dense and imaginative music, I couldn’t understand how it could be so clever and weird and yet remain so instantly gratifying, accessible and friendly. Despite the fact Kavus and Steve were already very familiar with it I could tell that they were really digging it as much as I...