The experimental pop group Prince Rama has long been considered one of music’s more eccentric acts as they consiste
The experimental pop group Prince Rama has long been considered one of music’s more eccentric acts as they consistently push on musical boundaries and lyrical concepts within the blanket of their signature genre: Now Age. In the years since being discovered by Avey Tare of Animal Collective, they’ve devoted a great deal of time detailing what this genre, or mindset, exactly entails from interviews with the press, interludes at concerts, and even a lengthy manifesto detailing the philosophies of “Now Age.” The concept is lofty in its ambition, but Prince Rama has always been able to pull it off thanks to their ability to flawlessly merge psychedelic music with dance & electronica structures while also consistently challenging their listeners to want and expect more.
The group’s latest record Xtreme Now, out this month on Carpark Records, is their most enterprising foray into this artistic philosophy to date with their most outlandish backstory merging with their most accessible music. Tales of time travel, the spirit world, and mystical ruins fill the record, but these tales are all grounded in accessible pop treasures each overflowing with wildly engaging melodies and surprisingly brilliant arrangements. It’s a record that no one could seemingly digest in a single sitting and one that almost commands you to listen to over and over again.
Xtreme Now‘s concept is one that instantly raises eyebrows, in equally curious and disbelieving manners. The critical press have been frantically attempting to reconcile the Larson twins’ claims with the organic value of the music and it seems that there are more questions now than there are answers. Great art, like this, needs clarification and with that in mind, we sought out Taraka Larson before her show at Strange Matter tonight to help gain perspective and understanding on the backstory behind their new record. At times, the answers she provided again left us with more questions, but by the end of it, the paranormal and metaphysical origin of Xtreme Now made perfect sense as did it’s amazing musical interpretation.
So what is the story behind Xtreme Now? There have been a lot of claims about the background from you having a near death experience to you visiting the spiritual plane.
Oh, there’s been so many near death experiences. I wouldn’t even know where to start there.
Rewind then. You spent time in Scandinavia and that was what inspired this record, right?
Yeah. An old film professor of mine from college is making this kind of pseduo-documentary, experimental film. It was going to be set out in Scandinavia and is loosely based on black metal in utopia. Part of the film took place on this commune that he specifically created for this film, on a remote island off the coast of Estonia called Vȫrmsi. We were staying on this compound built by this seventy year old shaman type character.
And that’s where this near death experience happened?
It’s hard to describe in words or at least the words we have. That’s why music is there to fill in the gaps. Basically, I was sort of riding my bike and I was drawn to this one spot in the middle of this field. There’s like a hill so I park my bike and walked over there and I saw there was this opening on the hill. Then I realized that there was this whole underground chamber that was in there. This Viking ruin. There were Viking ruins scattered all across the island. It used to be an old Viking outpost. I went inside and I immediately felt this sort of temperature shift. Everything got really cold and the inside of my body got really hot. There was this dislocation between my mental and physical body and I felt myself have this out of body experience. I was hearing sounds and voices that weren’t really there. I had this really intense sense of familiarity with the space too. Déjà vu I guess you could call it, but more intense than déjà vu. I knew where everything was in there. Somehow, I just knew that there was this spot where the bricks were sort of loose. I was in this sort of trance state and I went over and loosened one of the bricks and reached inside. There was this ancient, rusty key. No shit. I just pulled it out as naturally as you pull out a loaf of bread from the refrigerator. Once I came out of the trance, I was just like, “What just happened?” I had never even been there before. I almost got this transmission that I had to take the key with me, but in return, it was like this pact I made with the spirit world. It’d become this Divining Rod for hearing songs that I was supposed to write for this new album. I was receiving visions of extreme sports for some reason and it was weird. I was like, “What the fuck is going on?” I hate sports. I sucked at sports in school. I would be like the last person to finish in the track team. I just had this vision of these extreme sports merging with high art in almost a decision from the future. I felt myself in this space and moving through this space almost like I was participating in these extreme sports. It was this crazy out of body experience. Simultaneously being in this Viking ruin in medieval times, but also in the present moment, and also in the future in this speed art ski museum where base jumpers were jumping with parachutes of the Mona Lisa and skaters on half pipes painted with unicorns. It feels weird and almost pornographic to explain it in such a crude manner. It all happened in such a prismic, musical way that defies all logic and words. I basically feel like I made some sort of pact where I would be this conduit for these different songs and the language of the future.
Did you try to figure out if this Viking ruin was used in any type of paranormal or spiritual way?
I did ask some people about it and no one seemed to know where it was. The thing is, there wasn’t anyone on the island but us and we were all transplants. None of us lived there except that seventy year old shaman who was a native to the area and has been there for forty years. He didn’t speak a word of English and I also didn’t hit it off with him from day one. I picked some flowers from the island which apparently is a big no-no. I shouldn’t have done that so I was on the shit list. He wouldn’t explain anything to me.
How did the songs for this record then come about after the experience?
It’s really hard to say. It’s almost like the songs become the documentation of this moment and so I feel like in this moment, I experienced the songs at a very pure kind of synesthetic way. I experienced the songs as not only sounds, but also as vision and touch. As soon as I thought something, it changed the song a bit. As soon as I turned my head this way, it changed the song a little bit. Everything was sort of interconnected in this way. It was just layers and layers upon things. Very symphonic. A lot of it was stuff way beyond my musically comprehension or that I even had the technical ability to do. For a while, I was paralyzed afterwards. It was very difficult for me to write any music because after having an experience like that — I’d had never had that before so I didn’t know what to do with it. The thought at first was, “Why would I write songs after hearing such beautiful melodies?” It would never do it justice, you know? After you hear the most beautiful music in the world, anything you try to make after it sounds like total bullshit. So I was completely paralyzed for a while. Then I came to this realization that pop music is this sort of portal. You can never really capture everything you experience in a metaphysical state like that, but pop music is the means to present a sliver of it. It’s like holding up this painted mask and then you take away this mask away and there’s someone winking at you and that’s the pop song. Yeah, there’s more to this, but this is the cosmic wink. Here’s the song. Here’s the sliver. This is just one painted face of it. I feel like a lot of the slivers of that experience ended up on the record in the form of these pop songs. It was almost like you take a glass and shatter it and then you tack them up and build new things out of them. There’s still this essence though that I tried to preserve.
Had you had any spiritual or metaphysical experiences like this before?
[Nimai & I] were raised Hare Krishna. My parents met in a ashram out in LA and they were already monks living the monastic lifestyle and then they fell in love and had us. We were raised in this environment where sound was always viewed as this direct experience. Chantings and mantras and things. Not only a bridge to the spiritual world, but a direct experience to the spiritual world. It’s like a means of accessing that world and bringing it here and collapsing that wall that stands between Heaven and Earth. I’ve always, from birth, had this understanding of music that way. It’s been a process of going deeper and understanding it more on a direct level. It’s one thing to understand something as a child from a book level, but once you go through life and you experience things, it’s like, “Wow, I just had that experience; it’s all true.” You take that and bring it into your music. I feel like a lot of our albums have always kind of explored that space and I feel dishonest if I try to write a song that’s not connected to that space. Most of the songs, I can’t even take credit for because I feel like the melodies come from some other place. I feel like this secretary basically writing things down.
I know some other musicians who speak about connecting with the spiritual plane for their music often bring cite drug use as a means to manually create an experience. Has this ever been the case with you?
It hasn’t really been. I’ve experimented with a couple of things, but it’s not something I do on a regular basis. I’ve had a couple of really magical experiences on mushrooms, but it’s not really something that directly has influenced my songs at all. I mean, it’s a really powerful tool, but I think it’s the kind of thing where you get so much information at once, you have to have a sort of understanding and a grounding in this world in order to capture all that and translate it back. Otherwise, it gets lost. I feel like drugs wouldn’t help that at all. They’d probably hurt the experience for me.
There’s this drive and focus behind Xtreme Now that really wasn’t there in your previous albums, regardless of their quality. Do you attribute that to this whole expierence?
You know, I think that I’ve always had a drive and a focus with different albums, but that drive and focus might have been going in the wrong direction. With this one, the drive and focus felt really clear to me which wasn’t really there in other records. If your car is going in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going or how well you’re driving. You’re just going in the wrong direction. This one is very detached and also very fun. I finally figured out how to have fun writing music which is a funny thing to say that it’s taken this long. I guess I’m just thankful that I figured it out somehow. Duh. Have fun writing music, right? Don’t take it so seriously, even after visiting some Viking ruins.
Prince Rama plays Strange Matter tonight along with Mutwawa and Gemtone. Tickets are $10 with the doors opening at 9 PM. For more information on the show, click here.
