Prince Rama have released one of the most striking albums of the year. Trust Now announces itself in a remarkable way with ‘Rest in Peace’, where overwhelming house-style vocals morph into a Bollywood approximation of Kate Bush. It is skewed by buzzing electronics, vocal drones, and chimes that are off-kilter and immersive, setting the tone for the oncoming excursions. The album is a sustained feat of musical bricolage, constructed in bold strokes it refines and then entirely eclipses their previous efforts. The mix of Hare Krishna incantations and art school sensibilities from the improv, noise and IDM wing, could augur the pitfalls of being an exercise in the naïve sophistication of gap-year India-fetishists. The white middle-class dread/deadheads, kaftan and fleas brigade. However Prince Rama are lifelong – if not entirely practising – Hare Krishna devotees seeped in the cultural junk of the US spiritual awakening of the 1960s, so it is their parents who are the dirty hippies. Regardless of the validity of their appropriation of New Age Americana, Prince Rama provide a lysergic psych that touches upon space-rock in a way that would complement a Bollywood remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Bladerunner perfectly. They are not re-treading a backwards-looking hippie trail that many other "New Weird America" bands have done.
‘Trust’, after some oscillations that could soundtrack the launch of a B-movie starship piloted by Sun Ra and the MC5, builds an eerie space that combines eighties synthpop references and freenoise drumming in such an ingenious way it is surprising that no one has thought of it previously. It lulls you into a soothing stupor before the eighties synthpop finds a hook and is met by impassioned chanting vaguely reminiscent of Ari Up. The vocal ingenuity of the Larson sisters is deserving of greater attention than the pretty modest summer tour of Britain bestowed upon them. They have an eccentric way about them, but it is not affected or grating and manages – possibly through their opaque reference points – not to be hugely earnest. ‘Portaling’ is darker and weaves in and out of musical axioms loosely in much the same way their employers Animal Collective did in their slightly less planned albums or still do live. The range of sounds and influences are almost entirely different to their Paw Tracks bosses, but the refrain "lose yourself", that closes the song, offers a clue to the confluences between the two bands; both create imaginative soundscapes that suck the listener in with melodies, unexpected changes and discreet musical nuances, and when this is achieved the results are pretty euphoric; both have restated the swells and drops of dance music, modern composition and noise rather than conventional song structures whilst borrowing from pop and dance’s textures and sounds. Albeit in this instance Prince Rama have expanded on the scope of harmonies and tones with their choice of larger soundtrack-like grand reverb and Indian kitsch. In some ways it is like Lawrence of Arabia was in the Thar Desert not the Nefud and his sidekick was Chiranjeevi.
As the album closes it tightens, the more loose structures Prince Rama rely upon are harnessed. ‘Incarnation’ is unashamedly wide-horizon pop music that is creepy in a cultish way as it drops from summery desert pop to something a little more neurotic. This is dovetailed by final track ‘Golden Silence’ that is the most conventional song on Trust Now. It is brooding but less convincing than the rest of the album. They cannot sustain the relative mediocrity for long though as the not altogether rare Arkestra histrionics emerge to see the album out. This is one of the better albums of the year. It is definitely one of the most interesting. It phrases music that has been often neglected as unfashionable by their peers, bravely denying genre conventions. Most importantly it is a pretty superb listen that after the initial shock engulfs you beyond escape.