From steven Sent Wed, Apr 15th 1998, 18:50
From steven Sent Wed, Apr 15th 1998, 18:50
Prince Charming Presents (something like Tropical Heatwave) Its great moody underground trip hop like. One of his dark loungey tracks is on the choonz & warez compilation see the phun catalog at: http://mycal.net/ifj/ Here is a snipet from an interview: The Prince has recently moved from L.A. to Chicago for no good reason, he says, except for the possibility of some new adventure. He’s gone from organizing underground punk shows in Detroit to attending film school at New York University. Darlington’s music is difficult to describe in a simple term. If we were to fit him into any genre at all it would have to be filed under “experimental” and that’s not really describing a whole lot. With a background in Punk and Noise bands of the eighties, one wouldn’t really expect to the Prince to be mixing bossanova samples and ambient vibes to layers of dragging break beats and horn hits- to name only a few. Mixing the unusual and always doing the unexpected seem to be his only guidelines. His passion to search and explore uncovered musical territory undoubtedly presents itself on “Psychotropical Heatwave”. The album is a predominantly instrumental journey through years of exotic multicultural sound snippets. Vocal samples are used more like an abstract sound rather than a dominant or decipherable voice. Tape hiss and noise become part of its Da Da sensibility. Textures go from rough and raw off beat loops to beautiful piano and exotic flutes. Mood and tempo are consistently mellow and at times get close to that Portishead/Spy hop vibe. Yet at all times retaining it’s own distinctive originality. Beats are anything but typical ranging from a Brazilian feel to loops of fragmented, twisted and the most tortured break beat samples I’ve ever come across. As Post-Modern techniques of appropriation saturate contemporary electronic music, Charming avoids taking the easy road with tested and approved ass-shaking grooves, but treads new ground through the use of distortion and disguise challenging the listener. “A New Kind of Royalty” SEMI-GLOSS NYC review in spring 97 issue (c) Rick D. Granados 1996