Interview: Prince Rama

And you keep taking it up a notch! What brought about this idea for your own party [at Brave New Books]?

In the the past couple of years that we've been going down to South By, me and my sister were always try to put some parties together just because so many of our friends go down there. We used to live in Wimberly, actually, so we're pretty familiar with Austin. Nimai lived in Austin for a while in college, so we know places to play. And everyone keeps asking us if we're playing, and I'm like, "You know, why don't we start setting up some shows? We'll give our friends a place to place.” That was the motivation.

There's a lot said about your upbringing and how you guys met, and then the whole art school thing. Do you think it matters that much in terms of how you produce that music?

You mean the environment that you grew up in?

Or the unique story of a band. It's not just like the three of you met at a record store.

I guess it's different for everyone. But for me personally I feel like the environment has everything to do with what you're doing. Sound itself doesn't even have any sort of material substance whatsoever. It's totally defined by the space it's in - the environment it's in. The environment in which you started making these sounds is so important. I feel like every place kind of has a different vibratory frequency, you know? And it affects what you're producing for sure.

I was reading this stuff about architectural harmonics and how industrial designers try to design spaces so that they detect the hum of the machinery that's going to be put in these buildings, and then they detect the sort of resonant frequency of the building itself when it's silent. They're trying to determine whether the frequencies are in harmony with each other, so that when the machines are going they produce a frequency it's in harmony with the structure itself. Because if it doesn't, there have been cases of people getting sick at schools or in factories and stuff, and a lot of it just has to do with maybe a florescent light that's humming at a weird frequency that's not in harmony with the rest of the space. So, I don't know, I say that because I feel like we're constantly trying to seek out this sort of harmony with our surroundings. And wherever we are, I feel like there's this sort of unconscious tendency towards fitting in somehow.

That segues into a question that I was going to ask later, but it's appropriate now. When you recorded this last record you did it in what you said was a haunted church and in a cabin. What did that mean - in terms of I overall harmonics - to record there? What was the sound that you were looking for in those places?

I mean, that's just it. I feel like I was really interested, and I still am really interested, in EVP. I don't know if you've heard of this?

No.

Like, electronic voice phenomenon?

Oh, OK.

It's like when ghosts and spirits and just sort of unexplainable phenomenon create sounds. People have been recording it for a while, and it gets picked up on different tapes. I was really excited whenever we learned that these places were haunted. I'm thinking of this one song in particular...it was the strangest thing. I kept hitting this one note with my voice, and it would just totally create this weird feedback. No matter how far away from the mic I was, no matter what room I was in, this weird thing happened just when I hit this one note. And I feel like, I don't know, that was this weird porthole to another structure of sound that was already in the environment. It was like I tapped into it.

Well, that's cool, I'll have to re-listen. What song was that?

“Mythras.”

You write all of the songs. What process do you use to compose them, and do you bring them to the rest of the band in a finished form? Or do you guys work them out together?

I feel like they're building instructions. I create this sort of blueprint, like an architectural diagram or something. And then Nimai creates this foundation with her drums, or Michael will sort of lay the flesh of the building on with textures and put the outside around it.

You like to think in architectural terms, don't you?

Yeah.

You put out four recordings in four years. Was that a lifetime of work that you put out, or was this stuff that you were all of a sudden just creating and creating and creating, and you hit this kind of creative growth spurt?

I've been putting out stuff since high school, not under Prince Rama or anything, but I feel like I'm just kind of constantly writing stuff. It's not like I amass a lot of stuff and then wait a long time to put it out. I don't really understand how people can work that way. Once I get a song, I'm just like so eager to record it and get it out of there.

Are you surprised when people write about your music and hear elements like kraut rock and opera in there, or is that stuff that you hear as well?

I'm definitely not a big opera fan, but I like opera. I got these weird old cassette tapes from the side of the road that this woman was throwing away. She's a Mandarin opera singer, and she has all these opera tapes of her just practicing, and different live performances she's given. I thought that was just the most beautiful thing. But yeah, I don't know...I mean it's definitely stuff I will listen to. Kraut rock is something that I definitely listen to a lot. I don't really think our music sounds like it. I think the thing I like about kraut rock the most is just the communal spirit, and a lot of those dudes were out living these weird sort of utopian experiments while making this music. The music and this sort of lifestyle is so interwoven with their philosophies. I just kind of like that sort of full-on, integrated, organism aspect of it.