Prince Rama

A pummeling, voluntary thrust into the heart of darkness at the speed of light; a face-first bungee jump off the mortal coil into the gaping canyon of forever; a fistful of snow hurled at death's grin from high on a ski-lift doomed to eternally climb the summit-less mountain; a motorcycle falls from a tear in Hell; a tesseract constructed out of a half pipe slows down time as life flashes before your eyes in vivid colors; a pastless, futureless XTREME NOW unwinds before you, interrupted only by the consumption of a mysterious glowing green liquid oozing from a shiny aluminum can marked "ENERGY...”

Xtreme Now is the most extreme album Prince Rama has ever made. Writing for Xtreme Now began while the Larson sisters were living on a black metal utopian commune on V?rmsi, a remote island off the coast of Estonia during the summer of 2012. There, Taraka had a near death experience inside an ancient Viking ruin which sparked a recurring sense of time-schizophrenia, or the physical sensation of existing in multiple time periods simultaneously. In this case, she experienced a joint-existence in both the medieval ages and the year 2067. In one of her prophetic visions she describes, “In the year 2067, I witnessed an aesthetic landscape where art museums are sponsored by energy drink beverages and beauty is determined by speed. I saw a vision of ancient tapestries stretched across half-pipes and people base-jumping off planes with the Mona Lisa smiling up from their parachutes. I saw art merge with extreme sports to form a new aesthetic language of 'Speed Art.' I realized that time travel was possible via the gateway of extreme sports, and I wanted to make music that would provide the score.”

Perceiving a great void in the world of extreme sports for music that could match the metaphysical intensity of these death-defying feats, Prince Rama set forth to make Xtreme Now, the first real foray by any musician to create a new “extreme sports genre.” For inspiration, the sisters looked to their own flirtations with death and time-dilation, along with countless hours of obsessively watching extreme sports videos and consuming dangerous quantities of Monster Energy drink.

Working with acclaimed dance producer Alex Epton of XXXChange (Gang Gang Dance, Björk, Spank Rock, Panda Bear, The Kills), the new songs take on a more powerful, confident, fierce, infectious, all-encompassing, and accessible dance-club feeling than any other Prince Rama record—a fearless, visionary pop tour de force for the ghost-modern era that celebrates the ephemerality of life, dancing just at the edge of death's gilded smile.

Prince Rama’s Xtreme Now is the inaugural entry into what they have coined as the "Extreme Sports Genre." Inspired to musically match the metaphysical intensity of extreme sports’ death-defying feats, Prince Rama looked to their own personal flirtations with death and time-dilation. In a womb shaped by countless hours of obsessively watching extreme sports videos and consuming dangerous quantities of Monster Energy drinks, Xtreme Now was violently born.

Not much can faze the Larson sisters—Taraka and Nimai grew up in ashrams; lived on black metal communes; worked for utopian architects; written manifestos; delivered lectures from pools of fake blood; conducted group exorcisms disguised as VHS workouts; and are now tackling the world of extreme sports in a surreal, psychedelic, and nihilistic fashion.
The band’s often unpredictable live shows have been described by fans as “hypnotic and mesmerizing—the feeling of a stadium concert on acid,” incorporating elements of performance art, dance-club initiation rite, and vintage VH-1 hair-metal-bravado. Since signing to Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, Prince Rama has continually delivered powerful, raw performances of dark pop, as well as coining and embodying the utopian spirit of “The Now Age Movement,” a cult of post-Internet transcendentalism. After being discovered in a Texas dive bar by Avey Tare in 2010, Animal Collective helped them record and release Shadow Temple and Trust Now shortly thereafter, which peaked at #3 and #6 on the Billboard New Age Charts, respectively. To commemorate the Mayan apocalypse, they released Top Ten Hits of the End of the World in 2012, a pseudo-compilation album comprised of ten singles “channeled” from fictional deceased pop bands and partially recorded with members of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti.

After touring behind Top Ten Hits, the Larson sisters took time off from music to develop their visual art practice, exhibiting internationally at the Whitney Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and the MoMA PS 1 VW Dome, to name a few. Taraka has also published several manifestos on the “NOW AGE” that puts forth Prince Rama’s aesthetic and metaphysical philosophies, earning both hatred and praise from art and music worlds alike. The sisters’ seemingly effortless way of weaving conceptual art practice with music is inspired by an ancestral legacy of New York renaissance visionaries such as Kim Gordon, Laurie Anderson, and Patti Smith—but with more glitter and hairspray. Prince Rama’s new album reflects a mature, complex, multi-layered approach to culture-making. Xtreme Now exists not only as a fun record of dance party hits, but the concept will take on various incarnations including a visual art exhibition, a new manifesto, an energy drink, and a couture fashion line of active-wear inspired by extreme sports and the Byzantine age. According to lead singer Taraka, “We not only want to write new songs, we want to create a new emotional language.”