Prince Rama “Trust Now” 2011. Paw Tracks Records. Experimental, psychedelic and exotic electronica, Trust Now is Prince Rama’s fifth LP. The vocals (by sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson) are spectacularly unintelligible, I guess they are maybe singing sometimes in Sanskrit? (They were supposedly raised on a Hare Krishna commune farm.) One reviewer calls their style as “hiccuping like Kate Bush and howling like Siouxsie Sioux.” World music brought to its trippiest edge with hypnotic beats and modern synth. The tracks blend seamlessly into one another, making the 6-song LP feel like one giant psychedelic freak-out. My top tracks are the opener “Rest in Peace,” the synth hook in “Trust” is pretty groovy in an almost 80′s new wave synthpop style and “Portaling” has some really lovely melody lines. Trust Now is my only Prince Rama experience so I personally don’t have anything to compare it to. More experienced reviewers had overall negative comments about the release, basing it on the band’s past albums (i.e. Pitchfork: “The music here contains germs of good ideas, but too often they get frittered away through loose and indulgent jams that never go anywhere…Frustratingly, Trust Now doesn’t advance on the better ideas from Shadow Temple, particularly the elements of dance music that occasionally surfaced. Essentially it’s the core Prince Rama sound boiled down to its essence, which means anyone hoping for this band to ‘become something more’ should sit this one out and hope the Larsons can finely trim their vision next time.”)