Prince Rama

Brooklyn-based “now age” collective Prince Rama, which previously operated under the fuller name Prince Rama of Ayodhya, came together in 2007 around Michael Collins and sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson. The three musicians, who spent their formative years inside a Hare Krishna-focused community in Florida, first crossed paths in high school and launched their career as a conventional punk-pop act. One year spent at an art college in Boston, along with repeated listens to recordings by Amon Düül, Animal Collective, and Gang Gang Dance, steered them toward a new identity as purveyors of tribal, mantra-laden, lo-fi psychedelic pop suffused with cosmic overtones. Their opening release, Threshold Dances, surfaced in 2008 on Britain’s Cosmos imprint. Zetland followed in 2009, and 2010 brought both the limited-edition vinyl EP Architecture of Utopia on Animal Image Search and Shadow Temple, co-produced by Animal Collective’s Deakin and Avey Tare for the Paw Tracks label. Taraka and Nimai Larson subsequently slimmed the project to a duo for its fifth album, the 2011 set Trust Now, which was tracked inside a church with producer Scott Colburn; the space proved ideal for their emerging fusion of pagan and new age sonorities, witchy textures, and ambient expanses. Not Not Fun released the February 2012 single “Utopia = No Person” b/w “Exorcise [Chopped N Skrewed R.E.M.I.X.],” and November saw the arrival of the full-length Top Ten Hits of the World, again via Paw Tracks. The extreme sports-themed Xtreme Now appeared on Carpark in 2016.