quête:prince of failure

'Prince of Failure' marks a significant shift in Daniel Tompkins' creative world Written & developed over several years with Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner), the album traces a long internal process rather than a single moment of inspiration. The material reflects on neurodivergence, masking, & the psychological weight of living out of alignment with expectation - themes that shape both the narrative & the sound of the record. The Prince is presented as an archetype rather than a persona: a name given to the internal voice formed through self- doubt, perfectionism, & misinterpretation. By defining it, Tompkins reframes it. The songs move through states of disorientation, isolation, & repetition before arriving at a quieter form of acceptance. The emphasis is on observation rather than resolution.

'Prince of Failure' marks a significant shift in Daniel Tompkins' creative world Written & developed over several years with Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner), the album traces a long internal process rather than a single moment of inspiration. The material reflects on neurodivergence, masking, & the psychological weight of living out of alignment with expectation - themes that shape both the narrative & the sound of the record. The Prince is presented as an archetype rather than a persona: a name given to the internal voice formed through self- doubt, perfectionism, & misinterpretation. By defining it, Tompkins reframes it. The songs move through states of disorientation, isolation, & repetition before arriving at a quieter form of acceptance. The emphasis is on observation rather than resolution.

"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

Since the breakup of the legendary underground cult duo Prince Rama, former frontwoman Taraka has thrown herself headlong into the dark existential world of her “inner teenager," merging bastard elements of outsider-psych, post-edenic grunge, kaleidoscopic punk and post-adolescent angst to create her debut solo album.

Adele Sebastian was an Afro American jazz flutist and singer, active from the early 70s (when she was still a teenager) until her untimely death at the age of 27 (!) in 1983 from a kidney failure. In fact she had been depending on monthly dialysis to stay alive for years. She lived through and for the music and you can hear it on her only solo album 'Desert Fairy Princess' which was first issued in 1981. The mostly acoustic instrumentation brings a very natural and therefore rather retrospective sound considering the year the album was recorded. Adele and her band pull it off right from the start as if it had been 1966 and it was time for a revolution to shake the dust from the old time jazz. In a perfect way she mixes classic American vocal jazz elements with playful and more free passages, Latin music and tribal African sounds in the lengthy and quite rhythm oriented 'Man From Tanganyika' and makes the title track start with a mystical 'Allahu akbar' chant while it turns more and more into a dark and gloomy song with something like a psychedelic edge reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders on his early works. Wild rhythms from drums, percussions with tons of bells and chimes weave a thick groove carpet and conjure a magical atmosphere. Those jazz aficionados who love the mid 60s John Coltrane, his sidekick Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane will go crazy for this album.