Monday, April 4, 2011

PRINCE RAMA - SHADOW TEMPLE

I listened to this on Saturday while my wife took a well deserved break by way of the local nail salon.

We had already watched most of the WW2 submarine film classic 'Up Periscope' in which a young James Garner (of 'Rockford Files' fame) attempts to single-handedly sabotage a radio station based on a Japanese island whilst the crew of his sub anxiously await his return. At least I think that's what it's about as the sound was mostly down in favor of that last Bruce Springsteen album.

Either way it looks like films about submarines are a hit with my son. I suppose at 4 months old what's not to like right?

He started to get a bit antsy towards the end so we moved to his brightly coloured and ridiculous play mat. It's one of those things with two ajoining arcs crossing over it. The idea is you hang all sorts of different toys from it for him to chew and or play with... mostly chew.

What might make an interesting soundtrack to these proceedings I thought? After a brief rummage in the CD cupboard I pulled out an unopened CD copy of this album. It made the cut not because of the band's association with Animal Collective but because of the sleeve. The colours matched the play mat perfectly so it seemed silly not to see if I could exploit that marriage further.

The little guy on the mat seemed to greet the sound pretty well. I placed him at equal distance between the speakers to make sure he could appreciated the full stereophonic picture. 8 songs came and went and I have to say it was not the worst soundtrack to an afternoon spent shaking rattly toys in the general direction of my son.

Prince Rama used to be part of a Hare Krishna commune. I know this because I looked on google. Without this insight I had already decided that I was going to describe this as 'Death Yoga' music. I have in the past dabbled in the ways of the Yogi and was familiar with many of the lyrical chants. I hadn't however ever expected to hear them married with a dense and dark multi-layered soundtrack that at times brought to mind Goblin and other such synth-pounders. For some reason and I cannot for the life of me put my finger on this, It also brings to mind 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'.

The plus point of their sound is that it conjures a sense of ceremony, of a worshipping, a large group of people concentration on a common cause. direction.

The downside is that as I listened crouched on the floor in my son's general direction, soft-toy scale model of Spongebob Squarepants in my hand I kept getting this over whelming urge to go into Downward Facing Dog or Cobra Pose.

So anyway.

'Death Yoga'.

Yeah, why the fuck not?

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