This performance takes a little while to explain (which is what makes it interesting). In summer/fall of last year, Taraka Larson wrote a small book, called the Now-Age. The book was a manifesto of sorts, and the keyboardist/singer of Prince Rama also published a website with its contents. The Now-Age was an attempt to explain, critically, and also metaphysically, why the creation of music and its content both feel “modern”. The piece was a meditation on the de-evolution of modern symbology and the new aesthetics that can be used in the place of those symbols. There are lots of charts and graphs in the book and on the site, diagrammatic explanations with keywords identifying how to reach a state of utopia. If this isn't making sense, it's probably because these ideas are intensely different to paraphrase.
After writing the book, Taraka took a version published by Swill Children on tour, where it sold out (it has since been “re-printed“). She then decided to turn it into a visual presentation, which she gave at the Clocktower Gallery about a month ago, and which this is an audio recording of. Most of the piece is Taraka talking through the points illustrated on the web site, so if you need visual aid you can use that to follow along. But at a certain point, the piece becomes madness, and Black Sabbath, and you just had to be there. A worthy listen.
