Prince Rama
Prince Rama | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Genres |
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| Years active | 2008–present |
| Labels |
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| Members | Taraka Larson, Nimai Larson, Ryan Sciaino |
| Website | princerama |
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 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2013) |
Prince Rama (previously Prince Rama of Ayodhya) is a two-piece "now age" psych-dance band based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by sisters Taraka Larson and Nimai Larson.
Discovered by Animal Collective's Avey Tare in a Texas dive bar in 2010, the band signed to Paw Tracks shortly thereafter, and have since released Shadow Temple and Trust Now, which peaked at #3 and #6 on the Billboard New Age Charts respectively.[2]
In four years, Prince Rama have released six albums and toured in four of the seven continents, recording with members of Animal Collective and Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. Taraka recently published a manifesto on "Now Age" that puts forth Prince Rama’s aesthetic and metaphysical philosophies.
Biography
A pummeling, voluntary thrust into the heart of darkness at the speed of light; a face-first bungee jump off the mortal coil into the gaping canyon of forever; a fistful of snow hurled at death's grin from high on a ski-lift doomed to eternally climb the summit-less mountain; a motorcycle falls from a tear in Hell; a tesseract constructed out of a half pipe slows down time as life flashes before your eyes in vivid colors; a pastless, futureless XTREME NOW unwinds before you, interrupted only by the consumption of a mysterious glowing green liquid oozing from a shiny aluminum can marked "ENERGY..."
Xtreme Now is the most extreme album Prince Rama has ever made. Writing for Xtreme Now began while the Larson sisters were living on a black metal utopian commune on Vȫrmsi, a remote island off the coast of Estonia during the summer of 2012. There, Taraka had a near death experience inside an ancient Viking ruin which sparked a recurring sense of time-schizophrenia, or the physical sensation of existing in multiple time periods simultaneously. In this case, she experienced a joint-existence in both the medieval ages and the year 2067. In one of her prophetic visions she describes, "In the year 2067, I witnessed an aesthetic landscape where art museums are sponsored by energy drink beverages and beauty is determined by speed. I saw a vision of ancient tapestries stretched across half-pipes and people base-jumping off planes with the Mona Lisa smiling up from their parachutes. I saw art merge with extreme sports to form a new aesthetic language of 'Speed Art.' I realized that time travel was possible via the gateway of extreme sports, and I wanted to make music that would provide the score."
Perceiving a great void in the world of extreme sports for music that could match the metaphysical intensity of these death-defying feats, Prince Rama set forth to make Xtreme Now, the first real foray by any musician to create a new "extreme sports genre." For inspiration, the sisters looked to their own flirtations with death and time-dilation, along with countless hours of obsessively watching extreme sports videos and consuming dangerous quantities of Monster Energy drink.
Working with acclaimed dance producer Alex Epton of XXXChange (Gang Gang Dance, Björk, Spank Rock, Panda Bear, The Kills), the new songs take on a more powerful, confident, fierce, infectious, all-encompassing, and accessible dance-club feeling than any other Prince Rama record - a fearless, visionary pop tour de force for the ghost-modern era that celebrates the ephemerality of life, dancing just at the edge of death's gilded smile.
Art Projects
"Fountain of Youth 11:11" In an off-site ruin behind the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, Prince Rama present Fountain of Youth 11:11, a mythical water installation and schizo-temporal paradise. Inspired by the Tarkovskian image of beauty and immortality, the crumbling brick walls of the roofless structure are set against the bizarrely decadent, Edenic environment, echoing the fabled chamber in Tarkovsky's Stalker where innermost desires are fulfilled. The mysterious elixir of Prince Rama's fountain of youth flows from discarded cans of Monster Energy, while two stone sculptures of Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth, flank the entrance, confronting passersby with an elusive invitation to partake in the subaqueous magic.
"How To Live Forever" The first solo gallery exhibition by Prince Rama, HOW TO LIVE FOREVER ran from January 25th through February 21st at CULT EXHIBITIONS in San Francisco. With this series of immersive, multidisciplinary installations and performances, Prince Rama explore the transformation of kitsch to sublime, of time into eternity using pop music as a portal to enter a hyper-utopian future set to a soundtrack of pulsating, hypnotic dance beats of post-apocalyptic catharsis.
"The Shock. The Awe. The Art." Sponsored by Monster Energy Drink. In perhaps their most controversial undertaking to date, Prince Rama curated THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2067, a multimedia survey of "contemporary art of the future" in which they envisioned the de-evolution from post-modern to post-apocalypse and installed a 24 hr pop-up "biennial exhibition" in the 2nd floor of the Whitney Museum made up of various artists, artwork, and pseudo-sponsors they fabricated themselves. Part of the Blues for Smoke Exhibition.
"Neon Classical" Forty years after Philip K. Dick’s mystical experience with a mysterious pink beam of light, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art commemorates him with THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED, an exhibit inspired by his monumental work, VALIS.
Prince Rama’s portion of THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED, is centered around the book's main protagonist, Horselover Fat, who envisions the suspension of history in the 1st century A.D. with the landscape of southern California 1974 being superimposed as a holographic projection over Ancient Rome. For Prince Rama’s installation, NEON-CLASSICAL, they flip the script and manifest the suspension of history in modern-day southern California with Ancient Rome employed as a simulated projection of wealth, ersatz-spirituality, and aesthetic decadence. “In our version," says Taraka Larson, " 'The Empire Never Ended' is more of a comment on the past's devolution into kitsch and subsequent haunting of the present in the form of Ghost-Modernism and Zombie Aesthetics." The exhibit contains many interactive elements, including a fully functioning jacuzzi that visitors are encouraged to swim and relax in.
"Cake Basel" For Art Basel 2013, Prince Rama created a totally edible simulacra of Art Basel consisting of highlights from the fair printed onto photo-cakes and served out freely to the public as a part of Ketel One's De Nolet. The piece was divided between a workshop portion and a performance portion. The workshop portion consisting of setting up the "exhibition space"; building a temporary structure and arranging the photocakes on pedestals with corresponding placards, thus giving the public an opportunity to participate in the behind the scenes process of art fairs. The performance portion of the evening was staging the opening of the pseudo "art fair", with Prince Rama acting as the spray-tanned hyper-real Miami gallery dealers. However, instead of selling the artworks at over-inflated prices, they generously served out the cakes for free, subversively commenting on the nature of art consumption while also providing a playful alternative to the fair itself.
Video Projects
"Never Forever" (2012) -- NEVER FOREVER is the first ever Now Age psych-opera starring Prince Rama and featuring songs from their latest apocalyptic pop album, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World. Shot in only 5 days and directed by Lily X. Wahrman (Astral Projects), Never Forever takes you on a free-form journey through dimensions both surreal and virtual -- from the glamorous, twisted world of a post-apocalyptic gym queen to the nightmarish breakdown of a VR robot turned pop star. If Alejandro Jodorowsky was reborn in 2127 and crashed his motorcycle into the decayed set of Thriller, it still wouldn't come close to the terror that is Never Forever.
"15 Minute Exorcise" (2011) A limited edition VHS tape (made In collaboration with Video Program) was released by Impose. The exercise was based on UTOPIA=NO PERSON , one part ritual performance one part initiation ceremony conducted via “15 minute exorcise routines” lead by the pseudo-utopian cult called The Now Age (members of Prince Rama). A play off the words “exercise” and “exorcise”, UTOPIA=NO PERSON focused on the body as a vehicle for utopian experimentation, encouraging willing participants to undergo a confrontation with personal demons and shedding of individual identity through the physical exhaustion of the body. Here, the element of “trance” played a crucial role in the music of both shamanic exorcism rituals and classic dance aerobic routines as a means to syncopate physical movements to metaphysical time patterns and hopefully elicit an interplay between the physical and spiritual realms. Using the famous aerobics instructor Paul Eugene’s motto, “Let yourself go”, as an existential battle cry, Prince Rama transformed the concert space into a mystical gym as part of their three month Artist Residency at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The exercise was performed continuously for 8 hours straight by Taraka and Nimai Larson.
Cooking
Nimai Larson is a regular contributor to food and music publications and has done cooking demos in Detroit, MI, Melbourne Australia, Washington, DC, and New York City. Real Food Real Kitchens asked her to contribute a recipe for their newest cookbook New York Cookbook.
Band Members
- Taraka Larson: lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, keyboard (2008–present)
- Nimai Larson: drums, drum machine, percussion, vocals (2008–present)
- Ryan Sciaino - guitar, synthesizer
Past Members
- Michael Collins
- Christopher Burke
- Sasha Lord
Education
Taraka graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA in 2009 and Nimai studied Visual Art and Art History at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas.
Discography
- 2008 - Threshold Dances (Cosmos Records, UK)
- 2009 - Zetland (Self-Released)
- 2010 - Architecture Of Utopia (Animal Image Search)
- 2010 - Shadow Temple (Paw Tracks)
- 2011 - Trust Now (Paw Tracks)
- 2012 - Utopia = No Person (Not Not Fun)
- 2012 - Top Ten Hits of the End of the World (Paw Tracks)
- 2016 - Xtreme Now (Carpark Records)
References
- ^ Esquire
- ^ "Billboard New Age Chart". Retrieved May 8, 2013.
External links
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