Prince Charming

Prince Charming is an experimental music artist from the United States, born in 1969. He takes his name as a tribute to jazz, ska and reggae figures including Duke Ellington, Prince Buster and King Tubby.

Style and influences

His work sits around ambient, illbient, dub and trip hop, though he does not treat himself as part of a fixed scene. The music draws on cinematic sound design, classic psychedelia, dub techniques and ambient industrial post-punk from the 1980s, especially records that use urban soundscapes. He also uses elements of sample-based dubhop, spoken word and underground hip hop.

Early life and development

Prince Charming is raised by 1960s radicals who move around the United States while attending graduate school. As a young person he spends time around bluegrass musicians, Caribbean martial arts practitioners and roller boogie dancers. He grows up with a wide range of musical and cultural influences, including live concerts, Detroit radio, dance television and flea-market records.

In the 1980s he performs at underground house parties in Detroit as a DJ and performance poet, then joins the punk-ska group Bats on Skates. During this period he first raps as an MC, develops reggae and funk bass playing, and makes primitive four-track cassette recordings using field recordings, effects pedals, techno drum programming and post-punk guitars.

New York, Los Angeles and Seattle

After high school he moves to New York and studies film making and digital media at New York University film school. There he studies cinematic sound design, works in the graduate recording studios, helps graduate students mix film projects, volunteers at WNYU and spends time record shopping. His compositional approach is also shaped by bootleg Bollywood cassettes and their unpredictable film soundtracks.

He later moves to Los Angeles, where he works in sound design for video games and in Hollywood as an apprentice to composer Mars Lasar. Living at Zorthian Ranch, he works with sound artist Sebastian Clough, and the two form a punk hip hop noise band. He also contributes beats and live bass to the Los Angeles Shapeshifters and takes part in noise jams with EXP, a group that includes members of Shadow Project and Christian Death.

Prince Charming then settles in Seattle, where he organises and DJs at Sketch Pad, a weekly underground black book graffiti event at Heavens Records. He also forms a guerrilla hip hop crew that performs at fashion shows, art and craft events, poetry readings, karaoke bars, parades, LadyFest, Hemp Fest, Haitian refugee relief, the Dead Baby bike race and biker parties, alongside acts from grunge, death metal, rockabilly, hardcore hip hop, digital hardcore and acid jazz scenes. In Seattle he also writes for Tablet magazine’s hip hop section, DJs for the Burning Hearts Burlesque show, and designs a computational soundscape for the Postal Rampage video game.

Recordings and collaborations

He releases three illbient and trip hop albums on Wordsound: Psychtropical Heatwave, Fantastic Voyage and Anatomy of Prince Charming. Psychtropical Heatwave is built from dense sample-based dubhop and includes sounds such as pygmy water drumming, Indian festival material, tango, krautrock and 1950s exotica. Fantastic Voyage combines lush orchestration, fast drum and bass, spoken word and references to symbolist and dada poetry with underground hip hop flows. Anatomy of Prince Charming brings together miniature grime, electro and IDM pieces with cinematic classical, vintage jazz and psychedelic rock, then moves into more traditional dubhop.

Other releases include Orgasmo/Cavalcade of Thugs, a collaboration with Slippy the Dark Greasy Hog Humping Hobbit, also known as sound artist Sebastian Clough; Summer in Paradise, a limited-edition tour CD with unreleased tracks and techno, electro, disco and new wave experiments; Amore Vincit Omnia, a compilation featuring collaborations with progressive hip hop and digital hardcore artists from Seattle, including the original version of MC Confuz’s “Divination Systems”; and Lovecraft Technologies, a short-lived collaboration with Philosophy Major that parodies pop songs.

Other work and wider activity

Prince Charming makes field recordings, shoots video and travels widely, including in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Oman, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Egypt and India. In India he trains with master musicians in bamboo flute, sitar, sarod and tablas. He also posts surrealist comedy writing and digital video work online, and his interests extend to screenwriting and dance, including a self-described “Demonomaniac” style of toprocking influenced by Veena of the Bellytwins and Sugapop of the Electric Boogaloos.

He is also a member of the Palm d’Or Social club. His work is linked to a broad range of underground, experimental and hip hop contexts across Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.