Something appropriate for the Halloween!
Just in their name, Prince Rama, the three piece arrive with a career already fraught with meaning, and the associations readily to continue to flourish. Whether it’s their current record out on Animal Collective’s label Paw Tracks (fourth record to date) or their track homage to Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Thunderdrums’ they’ve evidently found a winning combination. So when we dug a little bit further why their spiritual sound gave us the shivers, it came down to a track by track explanation, thanks to lead arranger Taraka Larson. But being the curious imps we are, SUPERSWEET wanted to know a little bit more about Shadow Temple, so we challenged the band why their fourth album was represented by the big-ass jeweled skull, and yes, as usual we received a little more than bargained for.
“We first saw the diamond skull that Damien Hirst made some years ago and got really psyched and frightened by the notion of human life being reduced down to this symbol of decorated death. We then set out to find a human skull and spent two straight weeks gluing fake jewels all over it and building a pseudo-shrine for it. A shadow temple. If each life is a mere shadow of some more eternal light, then the skull represents an artifact of both light and darkness. It marks both the presence of life and its absence. A record is like a skeleton in a lot of ways in that it is the sonic fossil of life, the recording of a "live band" that is now reduced to the documents of their echoes. It contains both a presence and an absence. A shadow also has this two-fold nature in that it reveals the presence of an external light source projected on a form, and yet its existence constitutes neither of these. So yes, I feel like keeping all these thoughts in mind, the idea of using a decorated skull as the symbol of creating a "shadow temple" both sonically and visually becomes very important.” – Taraka Larson.
1) OM MANE PADME HUM
Taraka Larson (voice, guitar, autoharp, keys, synth, drum machine, percussion): My Buddhist friend first taught this chant to me up in Boston and I was totally intoxicated by it and wanted to sing it every night. It means "jewel in the lotus" and is the ultimate supplication for compassion.
2) OM NAMO SHIVAYA
Taraka: Me and Nimai's first cat was named Shiva (the Destroyer), so perhaps there lies a secret shout out to this fabulous feline.
3) THUNDERDRUMS
Taraka: We were on tour in Kansas city and the dude from the house we were staying at started blasting an insane new age tape from a hand-held tape recorder entitled ‘Thunderdrums’ by Scott Fitzgerald and we immediately wrote this song inspired by its pseudo-native American romantic desert synth peyote ritual greatness.
4) STORM WORSHIP
Taraka: After a long two weeks of recording with Josh (Deakin) and Dave (Avey Tare) up at the 135 year old church Josh resides in, we all decided we needed to take a break and just jam the hell out. So we all five had a huge drum circle and it sounded so epic we decided to use a snippet of it in the album.
5) LIGHTENING FOSSIL
Taraka: I found out later fulgurate is the more correct scientific terminology.
6) MYTHRAS
Taraka: Mythras is a pun on Mithras, a Greek myth recounting the Dionysian ritual from which we now celebrate as Christmas.
7) SATT NAM
Taraka: Satt Nam -- one of the Five Fifth dimensional words meaning "True Self". Try inhaling on 'Satt' and exhaling on 'Nam' and do breath of fire 100 times in order to grasp the true meaning of the song.
8) RAGHUPATI
Taraka: A homage to our namesake, Prince Rama himself (the real Prince Rama, that is... the hero of the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana).
Words: Gemma Dempster