Welcome to Totei

There are records you spend your entire adult life with. Hounds of Love is one of mine. To make it, Kate Bush built a studio on her parents’ farm, away from the influence of her label, and disappeared inside it for two years. She produced the record herself, using a Fairlight CMI synthesizer she had long been experimenting with, layering vocals and the didgeridoo against its samples, and weaving in field recordings of water and wind. Her writing was wild, but precise. The second side unfolds as one continuous song cycle with fantastical characters, a recurring motif, and a narrative that slips from reality and never quite finds its way back.

Released in 1985, it remains, over 40 years later, a defining and inimitable work of art. What produced it was a deliberate retreat, an almost unreasonable commitment to an idea, and an artist’s insistence on building the exact conditions her work required.

I knew none of this when I first found the record as a teenager, only that it sounded unlike anything I’d heard before—part pop record, part musical theater, and something else I didn’t yet have the language for. Learning the story behind the record’s making changed how I understood it. In some ways, Hounds of Love, with its account of a woman lost at sea, overtaken by visions and finding her way through them, was also a story about its own creation.

We’re listening to it now, as our small editorial team readies Totei for its first readers, and I’m thinking again about the space between the creative work we encounter and what it truly took to make—the surprises we find there, and the new meanings illuminated. That space is where Totei lives.

Founded by arts advocate Gaurav Kapadia, Totei is a publication about craft in all of its forms: We explore the principles, obsessions, practices, and private logic behind creative work across disciplines, mediums, and generations. We go deep with the people shaping culture, from the quietly devoted makers most haven’t yet met to the critically acclaimed figures whose practices reward a closer look.

What our subjects share is rigor, intention, and a belief that curiosity and dedication can change the way we live. What we hope our readers come away with is the same feeling inspired by an engrossing piece of art: that there’s always more to discover.

We’re launching our website today with stories on the chef Paul Carmichael (opens in new window), whose Caribbean cuisine is designed to make diners feel like they’ve come home, profiled by Jazmine Hughes; artists Trevor Paglen and Holly Herndon (opens in new window) on process and what the AI discourse is missing, in conversation with Max Read; the origin story behind one of Raul De Lara (opens in new window)’s whimsical sculptures (opens in new window), by Alina Cohen; an interview with writer Susan Orlean (opens in new window) on the art of asking the right questions, by Delia Cai; and a spotlight on the tools behind duendita (opens in new window)’s experimental R&B (opens in new window), by Olivia Horn.

Totei is online, in your inbox, and later this year, in print. We ask that if something we publish resonates, you send it to someone who will love it, too. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our newsletter (opens in new window) and follow us on Instagram (opens in new window) to stay in touch.

Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.