Sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson of psych band Prince Rama grew up in a Texas backwater town, moving to a Hare Krishna farm in Gainesville, Florida, as teenagers. They started playing music together in high school, partly as a way to filter their spiritual experiences into something more personal, and partly as an expression of their tween-y devotion to Blink 182. They went on to art school in Boston and later moved to New York, signing to Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label along the way, after being approached by Dave Portner at SXSW. The band’s focus had long since shifted from pop punk to psychedelic drones that were heavily inflected (whether consciously or not) by their childhood immersion in sanksrit chants, or Bhajans, and Bollywood musicals, as well as acts like German free-form rock collective Amon Duul.
Lately Prince Rama have been expanding their repertoire, with Nimai entering the world of the celebrity chef through her ‘Healthy or Hungover’ column for Impose magazine (try her ‘”Just Cuz” sprinkle cake’, ‘Summer quinoa salad’ or a series of recipes entitled ‘Why it sucks to be a vegan’, parts 1, 2 and 3). She also writes a love advice column for MTV Hive, where you can read her personal ‘flirting formula’ and plenty of other handy tips. Last year the sisters released a 15-minute ‘exorcise’ video as part of their artist residency at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room gallery. The routine aimed to help participants reach a utopian state through perfection of the body.
Their latest album, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, was conceived as the product of a post-apocalyptic world, in which Prince Rama ‘channelled’ the spirits of ten bands that had chart-topping singles at the time it all ended. The bands include Guns of Dubai, a clandestine Saudi Arabian duo that distributed cassettes via artillery shells; the Metaphysixxx, former WNBA stars turned ‘dancercise divas’; Nu Fighters, a pair of pop stars and serial killers on the lam; and a London-based sex cult called I.M.M.O.R.T.A.L.I.F.E, who composed ‘dance track hymnals that would provoke lovemaking acts and thus prolong the lives of its members’.
Top Ten Hits was the launching point for a number of projects meditating on the relationship between apocalypse and utopia. There’s a film, Never Forever, billed as ‘the first ever Now Age psych opera’ and tipped to include motorcycle-riding zombies, ‘muscle men with glitter sweat’s and copious amounts of fake blood. Taraka also wrote a manifesto to accompany the album, called ‘the Now Age: Meditations on Sound and the Architecture of Utopia’. The document is a not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek elaboration of the band’s concerns with ‘Ghost Modernism’ (i.e. the possession of present-day aesthetics by long-dead artistic forms, and the attendant hollowing out of visual and musical symbols and loss of affect) and the eponymous ‘Now Age’, which is the ever-present utopian dimension, or utopian potentiality, underlying the mundane. The Now Age can be accessed at any time through an event or perception that facilitates a loss of the sense of self, time and place.
Prince Rama are bringing their live show – which is as much a psych gig as a performance art piece and shamanic ritual – back to Australia later this month. In anticipation, Cyclic Defrost had a quick chat with Taraka Larson about the relationship between art and pop, the Architecture of Utopia and the difference between channelling and possessing the past.
Taraka Larson: Hi, how are you?
Cyclic Defrost: Good, how are you?
TL: I’m doing goood. It’s morning there!
CD: Yeah, I just got out of bed.
TL: Oh my god. Good morning – twenty questions! [Laughs]
CD: I heard you guys were travelling from upstate New York today?
TL: Yeah, yeah. I was up there apple picking. It’s like the first weekend of fall. It’s always a fun thing to go and do; I always look forward to that every year.
CD: That sounds great! So I did your exercise routine yesterday.
TL: No way! Did you survive? Do you feel so much stronger now?
CD: My thighs kind of hurt today, actually. I worked up a bit of a sweat, it was pretty good.
TL: Really? Awesome.
CD: I was kind of wishing that there was a Prince Rama yoga CD.
TL: [Laughs] Yeah, I know. We need to have kind of like a post-gym, like, you know, cool-down CD or something.
CD: So I have a few questions for you. I’ve been reading the ‘Now Age’ manifesto, so a lot of them relate to that.
TL: Awesome. Sure, go for it.
CD: I saw Simon Reynolds, the music writer, give a talk —
TL: No way! You saw him?
CD: Yeah, he was here for the Melbourne Writer’ Festival a couple of weeks ago.
TL: Wow, I love him.
CD: Yeah, it was great to see him. He was talking about the relationship between art and pop, and he talked about your band and the ‘Now Age’ manifesto —
TL: Really?
CD: Yeah, he said that you guys were examples of this new phenomenon where musicians are particularly comfortable seeing themselves as artists. And since you guys obviously went to art school and you do film, installation art, performance pieces and that sort of thing, I was wondering if you see yourselves as artists more than musicians or whether it’s all just part of the same project?
TL: To me there really isn’ any distinction. I feel like whatever we’re doing visually is just a visual manifestation of music and then whatever we’re doing musically is like a sonic manifestation of art. So, yeah, for me it’s really pretty intertwined.
CD: When I read the manifesto it kind of seemed like music was privileged. You talked about the Hyparctic Song as being ‘the ultimate form of potentialised beauty’. I was wondering if you thought that was particularly potent in terms of what you want to do?Â
TL: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, that’s always the thing you’re striving for. That’s always the thing that eludes itself when you’re striving too hard for it, so it’s kind of like a catch 22. I feel like the Hyparctic Song kind of just arises spontaneously. It’s like that spontaneous moment when there’s something you’re manifesting but then the universe is also manifesting it. It’s sort of like a – I don’ know, it’s an unconscious thing. But I feel like that spot where there’s, like, a diamond portal where two triangular forces intercept – the earthly forces and the spiritual forces – that spot is so hard to maintain and it’s so hard to navigate it, but when you can access that realm I feel like you can trust whatever is created from that space. I feel like the music that’s been created from that space, the art that’s been created from that space, it’s effortless really. It becomes really natural and spontaneous. It becomes something that’s not just your own, it’s the collective participation that you’re a part of. It’s you, but it’s also the compendium of everyone around you and the whole environment that’s brought you to this point. It’s a really beautiful way to just participate in this reality.
CD: I would have thought it might be easier, in fact, with music than with most artistic projects to get people to engage in that way, because people tend to feel like they have to think really hard, if they see an installation or something, to really get where you’re coming from, whereas music is more immediate and emotional.
TL: Right. It’s interesting though. I mean, I felt that way in art school, and that’s kind of what drove me to pursue music more heavily than visual art. I was just really disenchanted about conceptual art – this idea that it’s so alienating and so hyper-constructed, that you walk into this thing and you’re not supposed to get it or whatever.
CD: Or you have to have read all the major French theorists in order to understand what they’re getting at.
TL: Yeah, exactly. Well, you know what? I’m American; I don’t like French theorists. I was reading about the early American landscape painters, like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole. They would paint these panoramic landscapes and put them in these circular rooms, and you would stand in the middle, almost like a panopticon, looking around at this 360-degree landscape all around you. And people would cry and they would faint – I mean, really extreme emotional responses. It’s like, wow. What would that be like to – I don’ know, like, what happened? There is a way to still access that sublime, I think, through visual art, but I think it’s just harder to come at these days. There’s definitely people doing it but I think there’s just this trend of hyper-intellectualisation that’s come along with art.
CD: Quite often artists these days, I would imagine, would be kind of afraid to be so earnest and go for that emotional reaction in people. Everything is quite ironic and sort of self-knowing, self-aware —
TL: Oh, of course.
CD: everything’ kind of a joke.
TL: Oh yeah, totally. And, I mean, it totally is a joke. But the thing is, I think, even in being ironic and trying to be funny they forget that it’s a joke and then they take themselves seriously. And you’re like, ‘Wait, I though you were supposed to be ironic and it’s supposed to be funny, but now the joke is so serious’. It’s like, come on — give me a break! I think if they actually got it on that kind of deep level where it was actually funny I think people would have a different response. But, I don’ know, I mean, it’s a scary thing, you know – it’s a jump into the abyss. It’s risky to do that kind of stuff, and I think people could get away with it in music a lot easier because there’s this sort of pathos that is accepted innately with music. We listen to music when we want to feel something and we look at art what we want think about something or, I don’ know, not think about it, just have a pretty painting on the wall. But with music I feel like you have these really intense memory associations. It really carves out these different times in your life – different people and relationships and stuff. But I mean, I’m trying to just look at music more from this art perspective – that it’s non-different. Because for a while it was a struggle. Like, when I was in art school it wasn’t as trendy as it is now to use music in art, and I feel like I was really ridiculed for trying to. I mean, I presented one of our albums as a final project, and it was just totally panned. It was like, ‘You can’t do this’. But for me it was like, ‘Why is this any different?’ I think music totally has the potential to be the highest form of art, because it can reach people on such a massive and primal level. It’s incredible.
CD: And sound art very rarely —
TL: Oh yeah, sound art – forget it! I mean, it’s like you reach 30 people in like the basement of a museum or something. It’s like, ‘Ooh la la’. And Black Sabbath is playing to a stadium of people, and explosions are going off and stuff. That to me is the quintessence of the sublime. Playing a stadium show is the same as, like, the American landscape painting panopticon, where you’re in the centre and looking out across this like sublime landscape, except now the musician is in the centre and looking out at this 360-degree panorama of screaming fans. It’s the same kind of landscape, but the players have changed and the rules have kind of changed. But I think the sublime is still totally accessed. I think it’s really exciting to look at music from this art perspective and not have a separation between the two.
CD: You talk about concerts and live performance a lot in the manifesto. I was wondering if you consider performing more important than recording your songs?
TL: Both definitely have their own importance. I don’ know. The thing I like about performing is that it’s so fleeting; you can only really capture it if you’re there. Recording is a performance but it’s so much more constructed. For different bands it’s different. I mean, Amon Duul just presses ‘Record’ on a tape deck and jams for, like, four hours and you’ve got three albums or something. But for us, we do some of it live, but I mean like any other band we stitch a lot together. It’s kind of more like sorcery or something, or like this weird kind of magic trick. They both have their own purpose. I don’t really know; that question’s hard. Both are equally important, I’ll say that.
CD: I was wondering if you could explain to me what the Architecture of Utopia is?
TL: Oh, do you mean the album or the idea?
CD: Yeah, the idea. When I was reading about it it didn’ seem to pertain to something physical, necessarily?Â
TL: No, it doesn’ really pertain to something physical. I mean, it’s kind of both: it’s kind of a synthesis. It’s kind of like the idea of creating a portal, I guess. Think about building a structure – and I say structure very loosely, like, it could be a physical structure or a relationship between two people. A structure can be just the logarithmic spiral of a record and the needle passing through – that creates a structure. Any sort of a physical relationship, I’ll say, that’s created that has a place in this reality but also contains this portal into infinity and this sort of non-place. I think that’s a really hard thing to put into words. Even having a conversation about it you’re trying to put something that is very abstract into concrete language. It’s hard. That was a big part with the whole Now Age manifesto – it was like how do I write this in a way that creates language as the basis of an Architecture of Utopia, where you have these words that are concrete yet they’re spacious enough to let this portal exist where people can open themselves to access these different spaces through these structures. The Architecture of Utopia isn’t about transcending a place altogether, it’s not about abandoning, it’s not about leaving the world behind, it’s not about going to some afterlife or something. This afterlife is here; there is no difference. Paradise or Utopia is absolutely within every atom of everything here, and there are ways of accessing it if you can just put your consciousness in that place. You can turn any room into utopian architecture. It’s not just Buckminster Fuller or something; it can be McDonald’.
It’s funny because the last time we were in Australia the band we were on tour with, Sun Araw, one of the dudes had this sort of religious experience at Hungry Jack’ at three in the morning. So much so that he got a Hungry Jack’s tattoo on his arm afterwards. So I mean, for him that place was heaven, hell, creation, destruction – it was everything for him in that moment, and so he always wanted to remember. And I thought that was beautiful, because that’s what I’m talking about – I mean, the Architecture of Utopia. You can make any space into that, even Hungry Jack’ at three in the morning.
CD: I was thinking about that recently, actually, because in Melbourne there’s this huge emphasis on our bar culture. There are all these boutique institutions popping up everywhere and everyone wanks each other off over how great they are. But when you go to Sydney you can go into an RSL and there’s just a jukebox in the corner and a TV playing sports, and I tend to have way wilder nights there just because of the energy that’s in the room that people are bringing to it. It really has very little to do with the aesthetics that people put so much time into creating in Melbourne.
TL: Totally. That’s awesome. Me and Nimai feel the same way. That’s why we’re into trashy things, you know, like Monster energy drink or just going to Waffle House or something. Going to these things that people are like, ‘Oh, what’s transcendental about that?’ It’s like, ‘Dude, you’re missing the point – it’s all there!’ You know what I mean? Challenging yourself – not just going to places like Biosphere 2 or whatever, but going to just like Kmart or something and just walking around and really trying to be present.
CD: When I saw Simon Reynolds – I actually saw him twice; he talked about the relationship between art and pop, and he talked about his book, Retromania – I was surprised that he didn’t talk about you guys in that context —
TL: Of the Retromania book?
CD: Yeah. I mean, I haven’ read the book yet —
TL: I have read the book, actually. I heard about it after we put out our album. It was funny; it’s interesting because I feel like -Â I don’ know who this guy is, Simon Reynolds, but after reading his stuff I was like, ‘This is so strange’, because I just feel like our brains are working in the same way. Even the fact that he’s talking about art and pop is so interesting, because we are totally in the process of making a record about just that. It’s like, ‘Of course he is!’ I don’t know what happens, but you think about things and then you put a lot of energy towards them, and then it creates this sort of thought form outside of you and someone else accesses it, you know. But yeah, Retromania is super interesting. I feel like it’s not too dissimilar from Ghost Modernism, it’s just a different term.
CD: Yeah, except your solution seems to be quite different to his. You guys don’ seem to necessarily emphasise having to make something that’s totally new, it’s more about tapping into something else —
TL: Yeah, something more eternal.
CD: Yeah. You guys are channelling eastern sounding music, something that’s been around for thousands of years, probably – although it sounds really new in a western, pop music context.
TL: Yeah, yeah. After reading that book I couldn’ really tell what the solution was. Like, I couldn’t really tell if he was proposing a solution or whether he was kind of just observing, you know. But I feel like it really is just about this distinction between possession and channelling, honestly. Because with channelling – that’s what we were just talking about with the Architecture of Utopia and creating a portal – I mean, the Architecture of Utopia can just be your own skeleton, and then you’re creating that portal within yourself. Or you can be this sort of animated corpse or a zombie, you know, possessed by these undead aesthetics of the past that are still devouring the living. You could be that or you could choose to channel it in a different way.
CD: I was noticing that Top Ten Hits of the End of the World is very much a parody of Ghost Modernism.
TL: Oh yeah, for sure.
CD: Do you see a distinction between that conceptual and visual parody and then the music that you’re making?
TL: Like, is the music also a parody?
CD: Yeah, or is it supposed to be something that’s pointedly not Ghost Modernism?
TL: It’s weird, I have a hard time explaining it. I definitely have a bit of both. It started out as a total joke, and then it just became this thing that – it became more real, I guess. I had this idea to make this album channelling these pop bands and stuff. I wasn’ going to write any of the songs, I was just going to put myself in this trance-like state and just, like, dictate what I hear and become these other people. I was like, ‘This will just be this cool performance art project’s or whatever. And then as I was getting into it I was like, ‘Woah, this is actually happening. I don’t know who is speaking through me right now, but this is for real’. I really don’ know how to explain it without sounding like – I don’ know. But it became something where there wasn’ really a line where the art stopped and the life began: it was life imitating art imitating life. It just became very blurred. I think I definitely became pretty possessed during the making of that.
CD: The songs on it are quite lucid. They’re kind of lighter and poppier – I guess that’s the concept of the album.
TL: Yeah, totally. It’s kind of the vibe of our direction right now too.
CD: Oh, are you guys moving away from the sanskrit chanting and stuff?
TL: Yeah, I would say so.
CD: I was going to ask you about your musical background. I’ve been thinking about this Retromania stuff a lot, particularly relation to Australian music at the moment, but what I was thinking was that part of the problem seems to be just hearing way too much different stuff and hearing it kind of passively as a result. With a lot of the bands I’m really interested in at the moment what seems to be happening is they’ve kind of detached themselves from that a bit; they’ve isolated themselves to just focus on one particular thing. It seems to me like you guys kind of had that, sort of by accident, by growing up in the Hare Krishna community.
TL: Yeah, for sure. Growing up in the sticks in the middle of Texas.
CD: Do you think that was helpful in terms of your musical direction? Being very much a part of these two different self-enclosed communities?
TL: Well, I almost want to say no, because I feel like the music I was making in high school when I wasn’ really listening to any cool music was pretty bad, honestly [laughs]. It was when I started listening to more music that I started writing stuff that I can actually listen to now. I don’ know, I don’ think there’ anything wrong with listening to a lot of music, I think it’s just how – like, what you were talking about with being an active listener over being a passive listener. If you can actively listen to a lot of music, fuckin’ go for it. I mean, that’s great. I think it’s more difficult to go deep with it, but if you can, man, that’s the best right there. But you could easily passively listen to not that much music either; it’s not really the quantity or anything, it’s the intention or something.
CD: I was also thinking about that, though, in relation to how much your music seems to have been shaped by the Hare Krishna community – the Bhajans and that sort of thing. Even the way you sing is in this really high register like a Bollywood actress or something.
TL: [Laughs] Yeah.
CD: Was that something you did quite deliberately when you started Prince Rama, using those Eastern influences?
TL: With vocal range it’s so hard, because it’s like — honestly when I first started making music I just didn’ really listen to a lot of female singers. I kind of wished that I sounded like a dude. When I first started making music I was in high school and I was listening to a lot of Weezer and Green Day and Blink 182. I was, like, really into pop punk. But man, I wish my voice just sounded like Rivers Cuomo. Like, super deadpan, super just like college bro. I wish that we had a male vocalist to sing the songs or something. But, I don’t know, my voice never really sounded that good at that register. It always sounded kind of off. So then, I don’t know when it happened, but I tried singing something higher and it just made so much sense. It was just like that moment where you’re like, “Oh! Aha! I found my voice. Okay. This is where I need to sing’. It just came super naturally. I don’ think I was thinking, like, “Oh, this kind of sounds like Bollywood’ or “This is Eastern influences’. It was just ‘Oh, this is a lot easier for me’. I love Bollywood singers. I mean, Lata Mangeshkar – she’s like my girl. But yeah, it wasn’ a super conscious decision. Like anything else, it’s kind of like, you hear things and you know you like them; you hear things and you know you resonate with them. I feel like I resonate with Bhajans as much as I resonate with Guns N’ Roses. It’s just whatever happens to come out; it’s an organic process. I’m not really thinking too much like, “If I make music like this, it will sound like that’. There was a point at the beginning where I think I was thinking about that a little bit more, and it just didn’ feel right, it just didn’ feel honest. I think it’s changed a lot since then. I feel like it’s just more honest now. It’s kind of like a conglomeration of everything.
CD: So you guys have a new album in the works?
TL: Yes.
CD: Cool. Do you want to talk about that a little bit or is it too early?
TL: It might be a little too early. I don’ want to give away all our secrets just yet. [Laughs]
CD: Is there any chance of getting a screening of your film while you’re in Australia?
TL: I sure hope so. That’s actually a really good question. I believe we are screening it at a few shows. I’ll have to talk to our booking agent about that. I know there definitely are a couple of shows where we’re screening it, so I’ll keep you updated on that.
Prince Rama Australian tour 2013
16TH October 
Alhambra Lounge – Brisbane
19TH October
 – Amplifier – Perth
20TH October 
Festival of Ideas – Adelaide
25TH October
 – Red Rattler – Sydney
27TH October
 – Festival Hub – Melbourne Festival
