Prince Rama animated gifs by Julian Bozeman - www.videoprogram.me/princeramaprojections

TRUST NOW is the keystone album of Brooklyn’s Prince Rama. The album takes the kaleidoscopic mysticism of ancient devotional music and focuses it through the fierce urgency and archetypal language of pop, forming an environment that is both accessible and impenetrable. Deep synths rise from a sparkling sea of gamelans and prayer bells as tribal drums pound the earth with the hypnotic power to heal or destroy. Voices carry captivating and haunting melodies that shine like the diamond jewels of old Bollywood soundtracks spilling over dark wave dance floors.

UPC cd - 677517103724

UPC lp - 677517103717

Tracklisting:

Release Date: October 4, 2011

Bio:

Drawing from a collective mine of times and spaces, Prince Rama (made up of sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson) takes the threads of ancient symbolism and ritual and weaves a surreal universe that is wholly their own.  Their often-unpredictable live shows graze the space between psychedelic ceremony, performance art and initiation rite.  TRUST NOW, their 5th full-length album and 2nd album to be released on Paw Tracks was born out of this fantastic ritual space.  Spawned from the vernal heat of the Florida swamps amidst swirling patterns of pine orchards and pre-Columbian artifacts, Prince Rama was whispered into the ears of Taraka Larson, Nimai Larson, and Michael Collins in the summer of 2007 by the clanging of prayer bells and goat-skin drums.  They left the Hare Krishna farm where they were living to attend art school and form a creative nucleus in Boston.  The visceral, devotional and raw “Threshold Dances” and “Zetland” were released as the culminations of those early collaborations.  At this time Taraka also began working for the controversial visionary artist Paul Laffoley, and inspired by his architectural diagrams of utopic space, composed Architecture of Utopia.  After a series of extensive tours (one of which resulted in a tragic car robbery where all their equipment got stolen), the trio moved to Brooklyn, rebuilt themselves from the ground up and wrote “Shadow Temple”, which was released on Paw Tracks in September 2010. Produced with the help of Avey Tare and Deakin of Animal Collective, the album rose to #3 on the New Age Billboard charts. 

A few months later, Michael Collins took a hiatus from the band and the two sisters went on to refine and reinvent their sound through the recording of TRUST NOW, recorded in a 19th century church with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Arcade Fire).   Just this past year Prince Rama was also chosen to be artists in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, where they currently reside and continue their exploration of the link between music and utopia, conducting group exorcisms to the score of old VHS workout music and re-staging apocalypses through chopped and screwed pop songs.