Monk Rock

| 13 Aug 2014 | 07:20

    It’s Michael’s birthday,” Taraka Larson tells me over a crackling cell phone. She’s on the outskirts of Gainesville, Fla., where her parents live. “We woke up this morning and had pancakes and he’s 25.”

    At 23 herself, Larson is the elder sister in the incredibly young freak-folk/ psychedelic/minimalist art-band Prince Rama, telling me about her bandmate Michael Collins. Collins and Larson met in high school, dated for about seven years, but are now just good buddies. Her little sister Nimai is 22.

    Prince Rama lifted anchor in North Carolina in early September, and won’t find solid ground until around Christmastime.

    “Where are you?” she asks. Well, I’m sitting on the street somewhere in the Flatiron writing furiously into a notebook as I try and get all of this down. I was supposed to meet the sisters at The Bagel Shop on Bedford Avenue, near where they live, between when we met at a show in June, and now, to get this story; the band’s Paw Tracks debut, Shadow Temple, had just hit streets and I couldn’t help rushing up to the wonderfully awkward, eccentric sister-duo to tell them how dark, meditative and epic it was.

    She says after I attempt an explanation: “I hope you’re doing better! We were all so worried about you,” And I believe her. She exudes good vibes, even through bad reception. The band’s publicist tweeted at me: “I have a hard time hiding my unabashed love for everyone in [Prince Rama].”

    And I believe him, too. The Florida lovefest/birthday bash/ swamp exploration is one of many stops for Prince Rama on this tour. On the road, the group listens to a lot of ItalaDisco in research for the band’s next tour, one in Europe, and also lots of Elvis. Prince Rama can’t stand sitting still.

    “It’s this thing of not having a job, just sort of floating through the city,” Taraka says.

    The band’s made touring a way of life; the music curiously tinged with the supernatural without projecting ideology onto the listener. Taraka conceives most of the songs, except for a few derived from traditional Hindu chants. With a whirlwind of drums, synths and near-to Reggaeton guitar, the sisters share insistent, towering harmonies as Taraka plays the drums, Nimai plays guitar and Michael does most of the synth work.

    “I think it’s possible to separate the mystical from religion without prescribing to the doctrines as a method of life.”

    At the end of this Odyssey, the band has an artist’s residency at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. It’ll be toying with cult aspects of music, and the band members are certainly well-informed—the sisters were raised in a Hindu commune near Gainesville. But we’re not going to talk too much about that because there’s way too much shit in the works to hash over talking-point history. Let’s just all agree the band’s got an interesting past.

    For the ISSUE residency, Prince Rama will pick a date in the near future, henceforth deemed The Apocalypse, and create a pseudo-cult around the pending Doomsday. Then, the trio plans on actually creating some End Times—I’m still not sure if this is something we should look forward to, but if anyone’s gonna text the Four Horsemen to come over, I’m glad it’s Prince Rama.

    As far as new music, Taraka tells me the band has enough to begin recording and writing a new album. She’s been influenced a lot lately by Daoism. In the past, she’s digested thinkers of the New Left, without being weighed down by their curmudgeonly dogmas.

    Growing up in Gainesville, the band’s past is tied to the punk scene emerging there: Krishnacore. 108, a band still touring often in Europe under Bannon’s Deathwish label, named itself after the number of beads in a round (a Krishna rosary). The members of Prince Rama saw Shelter a lot, too, and Less Than Jake.

    “A lot of my favorite bands broke up this summer, and now I don’t know what to do with myself,” Taraka says with empathy. And I feel bad for her. But somehow I know it’s all going to work out.

    >> Prince Rama Oct. 20, Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-253- 0036; noon, $TBA. Also Oct. 22 at Death By Audio and Oct. 29 at Brooklyn Bowl.