and doubled as a video game soundtrack.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSince then, Prince Shima has been working at completing several projects he started during the pandemic lockdown, one of which being his latest release, <\/span>Choose Your Own Adventure.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\u201cThis was one of the first projects I started during lockdown,\u201d Prince Shima told Victoria Buzz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe added that because he finds the inspiration for this one to be a bit darker in nature than some of his other recent projects, he found it difficult to just sit down and finish.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt took a lot emotionally for me to get through this and it came out of that very dark place of the early pandemic days.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nPrince Shima says that <\/span>Choose Your Own Adventure<\/span><\/i> was inspired by uncertainty in the media, uncertainty surrounding everyday interactions and the increasing divisiveness he was seeing in the community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cEverything became very political, about who was getting vaccines and who was not, who was wearing a mask and who was not\u2014everything became super intensely politicized,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t help that at the time I was binge watching true crime series, podcasts, I blasted through <\/span>Tiger King, Making a Murderer, <\/span><\/i>all that stuff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nPrince Shima noted that he had an epiphany, realizing how desensitized he had become to the humanity behind each one of these stories.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAll of this media about crime and things done to other people, it was all very close to memories I had from childhood,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSome of the ways Prince Shima was able to see the human side of these stories was through local examples of crime: Michael Dunahee\u2019s disappearance, Reena Virk\u2019s murder and the \u2018Satanic panic\u2019 that began in Victoria during the 80s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSome of these true crime stories are still being exploited in the media, and that sat with me weird because I was born and raised here, I love this place and I feel very protective over the island.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nChoose Your Own Adventure <\/span><\/i>is one of the first albums that Prince Shima has made that includes vocals on all tracks, where often he makes more instrumental music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cVocals were a really key component to this album,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s because the lyrics are a really important piece of the narrative of this album, which has a really clear structure, telling a story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe album starts out telling a tale of naivety, then builds to cover ideas of danger or violence on the song \u201cUnmarked Van\u201d before finishing the narrative with coming to grips with these traumas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe highlight track for this week\u2019s New Music Monday falls into the latter portion of this arc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHighlight track \u2013 \u201cSundown Curfew\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n
Prince Shima says the song \u201cSundown Curfew\u201d adds a third layer to the narrative he was trying to tell through this album.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve been doing a lot of work recently\u2014most of it unreleased\u2014connected to Japanese Canadian identity and during the pandemic I started to think of my childhood,\u201d said Prince Shima.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI did an archival interview with the remaining family members of mine who were affected by Japanese internment in World War Two.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHe added that while writing the album, he was often thinking of how children are taught to be afraid of the dangers of the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHowever, in the context of the Second World War, Japanese children themselves became the perceived threat, flipping that narrative on its head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI have an uncle who was a 12-year-old boy and was arrested by the RCMP because he was out after the curfew,\u201d said Prince Shima.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI started thinking about: \u2018How does a song change when we re-examine who is the outsider and who is the perceived danger to the community?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTo try to convey this even further, Prince Shima had a music video shot on an old hand-crank eight millimetre film camera that was from the same era as the internment was taking place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe went and shot all of the places where my family had lived and might have been during this time,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOur goal was to film all of these places without any people in it, the idea being: \u2018what does a community look like when there are no people there?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nCheck out the video for \u201cSundown Curfew\u201d by Prince Shima below:<\/span><\/p>\n