Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, Prince Shima is the New Music Monday highlight!
Prince Shima is the solo project of Bradley Kurushima who was born and raised in Victoria and has spent the better part of his life within the music scene in a myriad of bands playing all kinds of genres.
“For years, I played in a slough of punk, indie and hardcore bands, doing a bunch of tours and releases under different names, but it was always the case that we would lose a bass player or a drummer would move to another city or something, then the band would fold,” Kurushima told Victoria Buzz.
Prince Shima came about in 2017 and allowed him to take some of his old works and re-work them in a new genre, through a different lens.
“It was a way for me to hold on to some of these songs I wrote that were meaningful,” he added.
Kurushima says that he would define his music as a reclamation of the ‘new age’ and ‘world’ subgenres, within the electronic music lexicon.
“I think those genres are really ‘poo pooed’ in the electronic music community and I feel there is a lot to experiment with them,” explained Kurushima.
“Exploring other musical traditions from other cultures and incorporating those instruments.”
In terms of new age, Hurushima says that he appreciates the way that genre can focus on the ties between spirituality and music.
Prince Shima just released a new record called Half Earth Socialism, which was actually created for a planetary crisis planning video game by the same name, and is originally based on a book.
Kurushima was enlisted because of musical prowess and his understanding of the topic the game creators/authors wanted to explore—how to slow the climate crisis and stop human extinction from happening under a singular socialist governing body.
“The basic thought exercise behind this book is ‘what if we stripped away all of these excuses we get from governments and companies to say, well green technology and green solutions to real concrete problems are not profitable, or where do we get the money to do this, or how do we build consensus to do these kinds of projects,’” Kurushima explained.
“It’s a super complex problem solving game.”
For Kurushima’s soundtrack to the game, he said he wanted to use as many instruments, or samples of instruments, as possible from every continent.
He managed to find some samples of continental instruments and music such as Appalachian dulcimers, harps, kotos, taiko drums, timbales, pandeiros and udus.
The game is free and now widely available and can be found on Steam, or the Half Earth Socialism website.
To listen to the album Half Earth Socialism, check out Prince Shima’s Bancdcamp and also be sure to check out his other music on Spotify and Apple Music.
Prince Shima has a show coming up quickly on September 6th at ‘The Orange Light’ located at 612 David Street in Rock Bay.
Find tickets to that show here.
To be in the know for future Prince Shima shows, be sure to follow him on Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: CORRODE injects debut EP with hardcore energy and meaning
- New Music Monday: Trophy Dad turns sad feelings into happy songs with latest EP
- New Music Monday: HOTPOT embrace Black music on new single ‘IOU (Hot Mix)’
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“It’s so important to have this kind of commercial free community radio like CFUV,” Kurushima said.
“I love listening to all the foreign and second language programming. I’ll tune into those programs even if I don’t understand those languages—It’s just a way of accessing other kinds of music without getting it crammed down your throat by a lot of traditional media channels.”
He added that community radio stations like CFUV are the only ones championing independent artists and they have become such an important resource for the arts to thrive.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Prince Shima in the comments below.
