Data Breaker

For every 10 electronic musicians/DJs who migrate to Seattle, it seems a few depart from it. Two talented producers who’ve left our city since 2006—Prince Charming (Josh Darlington) and Son of Rose (Kamran Sadeghi)—have new albums surfacing around the same time, both of which deserve your attention.

While dwelling here, Prince Charming released three full-lengths for
the revered dub/hiphop/illbient label WordSound. He also co-led
Lovecraft Technologies, a brilliant collective of musical
misfits that imploded due to personality conflicts. Darlington moved to
L.A. to further his film-industry credentials and is surely infecting
Hollywood with his subversive ideas, even as I type. On the sly, he’s
also recorded Lapis Lazuli (Karlrecords;
www.karlrecords.net), a limited-edition LP/CD.

Prince Charming’s stylistic promiscuity and innate sonic exoticism
make his music hard to categorize but easy to enjoy. At once seductive
and sinister, playful and ominous, his productions reflect a polymath’s
knowledge and a hedonist’s pleasure principle. On Lapis Lazuli,
PC puts his distinctive touch on film scores, dub, illbient, and myriad
ethnic musics. One standout is “Zebrine Polymorphous Blues,” a
triumphant, eerie piece that posits the RZA scoring a Dario Argento
horror flick. “Spider Scorpion Conch” launches triphop into
heretofore-unexplored alien territory. “Pomegranate of Vice (a
Supergeometry Symphony)” blows up film-noir soundtracks to gargantuan
dimensions and adds skewed funk beats and machine-gun fire.

Throughout Lapis Lazuli, Prince Charming lavishes an array of
exciting, fresh sounds while evoking unusual atmospheres. His ambitions
are grandiose, and he achieves them with an uncheesy, big-studio
flourish.

Son of Rose’s All In is the prolific micro-sound producer’s
fourth album under that moniker (he recorded Through Thickness under his own name), and the first for his own Blanket Fields label (www.blanketfields.com). It continues his tradition of
forging tracks that are fantastically tactile and spacious, using
piano, EBow, drums, and live electronic treatments. “Falling Forward”
starts the album with beatific shimmering drones and what sounds like
pitched-up wind chimes. It’s understatedly gorgeous and calming,
conjuring a mystical healing-music sensation. “Movement Transposed”
sounds like an altered dulcimer or harp riff ka-chinging amid
steel-wool whorls, while “Toward Sensation” is a stellar, metallic
drone, akin to Charlemagne Palestine’s Bösendorfer organ, honed to
a needle-sharp tone. “RADii” is quite possibly the sound of Saturn’s
rings forming. “Fragrant” evokes Xenakis’s oblique atonal thrusts and
corkscrewing diminuendos; it’s a kind of a skeletal, electroacoustic
dub and a disturbing anomaly from the rest of the disc.

All In—which was partially funded by the City of
Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs—is a superb
addition to Son of Rose’s impressive canon. It wouldn’t be surprising
to see Sadeghi soon doing his own soundtrack work—probably for
documentaries on the secret life of sea creatures and/or the daring
adventures of microorganisms.