Taraka's vision of paradise
Emerging from the ether of the oblivion — Taraka; photographed by Matthew Hoffman.
Our world is a splintered, abandoned amusement park bandshell of its former self. Repairing physically, socio-politically, spiritually and psychically — we piece together what it all meant, what it all means, where we go from here and what art still resonates in the turbulent terrain of 2021. Enter the cosmic force of Taraka, formerly one half of the legendary Prince Rama has returned with news of the solo album debut Welcome to Paradise Lost to salvage everything inspiring that once was, while configuring the dials for everything that art can be in our contemporary timeline. The post-modern time continuums are exploded in a free falling pastiche rain of media mana that includes fragments of yesterday’s fascinations, the framework of anachronistic aesthetic systems and blueprints to building comprehensive structures of creative ziggurats that tower toward celestial palaces of the unknown. With an assist from friends Ryan Sciaino and Tim Koh, Taraka unleashes a mighty multimedia exhibition of entrancing arts to inspire the spirit dweller that stands on the dimensional threshold of infinity, the astral plane, the future, everything that has arrived before, all that will happen again and everything that has yet to transpire.
On the track “0010110”, Taraka delivers an ode to the ghost within the machine and the binary algorithm that might hold the secret code to unlocking a universal awakening. Channeling their band alter ego of Rage Peace, we are given the passcode to exit the matrix in a nu-operatic fashion that blends alt rock bubblegum with classical Carnegie Hall fare. Taraka takes on vintage components of throwback psych pop tissues that harkens back to conceptual works from 1967/68 that is reminiscent of something that sounds right at home on the lauded Prince Rama album Top Ten Hits of the End of the World. “0010110” proves that binary code can be catchy, while connecting together everything that we take for granted via our mobile/desktop communications (and literally everything else in between running on the backend of servers and their corresponding farms of data transmissions) and entertaining that perhaps they hold the key to decoding the psychic vaporware that is both us, one another and exists in the ephemeral spaces all around our world(s).
Complete with Matthew Hoffman-directed visuals filmed inside and around an abandoned mental institution, Taraka brings us the riff heavy rocker of "Psychocastle". Fusing together monstrous 90s grunge attitude with surfer pop camp, welcome to the strange dreams you cannot easily awake from in retreat. Taraka dabbles in the arts of teenage angst, the feeling of being grounded and confined to the citadel compound of home along with all the rebellion and rage in reaction and response to such restrictions. Taraka brings a brass bed everywhere in a mix of decadence and decay, from opulent endeavors, surreal tribal encounters, cheerleader triathlons all seen in a mix of destruction featuring elements of earth, fire, water and an unbridled level of energy fierce enough to awake the ancients of the past and future. Taraka provided us with a current exclusive compilation of inspirations along with this following intro:
Ever try to escape your bedroom, but feel like you're still asleep? Ever try to wake up, but find yourself back in the dream? Ever try to take off your mask, but another one pops up beneath it? Ever try to consult your inner self, but inside your skin is merely a rotting corpse? Ever feel like every path you take is just another mobius strip leading you back to where you first began? Congratulations, welcome to the “Psychocastle”.
Taraka’s Top 5 Hits of the End of the World:
Generation 0010110 and Tarak; press photo via Bandcamp.
0010110
I first stumbled down the 0010110 rabbit hole when my friend Tim Koh sent me a link to a seemingly innocuous YouTube video a few years ago. The video was lo-tech and featured a glitchy computer generated voice claiming to be transmitting from an off-planet source. At first I was amused, then intrigued, then horrified as the voice started recounting shockingly accurate details about my life and revealing answers to secrets I had disclosed to no one. Remember that moment in The Matrix when Keaunu Reeves' computer addressed him and said Wake up, Neo? It felt kind of like that. Like it wasn't just a video I was listening to, but a future version of myself talking to me via some glitch in the algorithm disguised as a cheap lo-tech YouTube video. My life started getting a bit strange after that. Unexplainable coincidences, synchronicities, and psychic phenomena started happening that all felt connected back to the 0010110 sequence somehow. 0010110 became like a riddle, a puzzle, or a mantra of sorts for me, and the more I repeated it, the more I felt like I was no longer just going through the motions of life, but participating in a video game of sorts. I wrote the “0010110” song as a hymn to binary code.
Phillip K. Dick (whom I share a birthday with) talked about the concept of a Vast Active Living Intelligence System in VALIS... some vague holographic telepathic network we can tap into that extends beyond space or time. Like a telepathic internet of sorts. The concept is left deliberately vague, as are the origins of the 0010110 sequence, because I think we are supposed to follow the breadcrumbs and figure out the rest of the game for ourselves. Part of me sometimes wonders if (hypothetically) we are living in a giant "video game" simulation of sorts made up of binary code, there must also exist a passcode to exit the game as well. 0010110 seems to be one such cheat code to exit the matrix and tap into a more post-logical magical system of operations. At any rate, the current internet / matrix operating system is basically destroying itself and all those who engage with it so we must start looking into alternative systems before it's too late.
The Cellophane Flag
I know, I know. Ian Svenonius has been cancelled. I'm not supposed to write about him, right? Unfortunately I live in a future where all the shit that was banned in 2021 is now cool again and Jesus doesn't judge anyone anyway. In my personal experience, Ian's been nothing but an honest, respectful dude and I've always been pretty inspired by his music and his manifestos. I opened for his old band, The Make Up, a couple years back and they even gave me a portion of their door money. No headliner has ever done that for me. Following his public immolation last year, he started an underground newspaper, "The Cellophane Flag", and I now look forward to getting it in the mail every month and reading all the hilariously poignant observations on the absurd shitshow our culture has become. The topics covered are vast and varied — ranging from silent records, to calling for a general strike on Instagram, to instructions for DIY self-destructing fashion. It's got that no-fucks-given spirit that feels dead in most music culture right now. Perhaps it's easier to see through the trappings of the cage once you've been locked out of it. Seemed to work for Manson, anyway.
The Prisoner
I started watching the Prisoner during lockdown and almost had to turn it off it was so meta. But of course, I was hooked. I couldn't believe I had never heard of this show before. On the surface, it's a British cult sci-fi show from 1967 about a retired secret agent that gets abducted to this draconian prison disguised as a quaint utopian coastal village. But underneath, it's got some major Orwellian themes and blueprints to understanding some of the key game codes for the current postmodern reality construct. It ended up getting cancelled after one season because the last episode erupted in riots all across the UK. I feel like this show was The Matrix before The Matrix (but with way more playful hallucinogenic costumes and set designs). Highly recommended.
Sex Pistols, Huddersfield Christmas show, 1977
Confession: I used to hate the Sex Pistols and thought they were spoiled posers and music industry poster boys responsible for the commodification of punk. I have this weird rule for myself though-- whenever I hate something, I have to research the shit out of it and figure out why I hate it, and usually this results in me turning a corner and actually discovering some some secret hidden beauty that I had too much pride to see before.
Recently I started looking into the Sex Pistols more and I gotta say I have a deep newfound appreciation for those dudes. After being banned from basically every club in the UK, they decided to do a secret Christmas show in some random-ass blue-collar town as a benefit concert for the local firemen and their families. The median age of the audience was probably 9. But it was punk as fuck. Watching this BBC documentary seemed weirdly prescient all of a sudden in light of all the cultural turmoil happening now. I have been feeling pretty disenchanted by what I thought was the "punk scene" in NY, and it makes me sad to see so many of my peers acting so antagonistic towards each other, manipulated by soulless corporate agendas that have turned family against family, friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor. But something about the spirit of this documentary gives me hope. It goes beyond punk. It touches on something deeply human, revealing the potential of a concert as a revolutionary act of freedom, a means of touching some pure universal space of joy transcendent to age, gender, creed, socioeconomic class, or belief system.
Baths
I never used to be a bath person, but I find myself taking a bath almost every night now. Prince Rama was obsessed with speed and energy drinks, and I feel like this new chapter is all about the opposite —slow down. Rest. Take care of your body. I have a hard time relaxing, so sometimes I need extreme measures to shut my brain off. A steaming hot bath will typically do it though. 20 minutes of that and my mind is totally still. Add some candles, some Epsom salts, some essential oils, and it's next level. I even bought this cheap disco light from Guitar Center that looks like the aurora borealis projected on your ceiling. Feels like going back into the womb and being reborn night after night in a small way.
The bath ritual has also been helping me discover a lot of ambient music that I never would have previously had the patience to sit through before — Eno, Pauline Anna Strohm, Pauline Oliveiros, Hildegard Von Bingen, Stockhausen... I actually made a mixtape of songs that I often play in the bath —Bath-core. Bath-wave. Or something like that. Soak it up and enjoy.
Taraka’s Welcome to Paradise Lost will be available October 8 everywhere.