The Prince of Failure album (a collaboration between Daniel Tompkins and Paul Ortiz) arrives on 19 June via KScope, according to Hold Tight, and it is already one of the more quietly extraordinary debut records you’ll hear this year.
Tompkins, known as the vocalist in TesseracT, and Ortiz, operating under his Chimp Spanner alias, have built something dense and personal here: spacious arrangements, electronic textures, guitar work that bites, and vocals that feel uncomfortably exposed. The project has its roots in a real diagnosis, a real crisis, and a friendship that pulled both men back from the edge of giving up entirely.
A diagnosis that changed everything
Prince of Failure was originally intended as another Tompkins solo record, with Ortiz producing. Then Tompkins received a diagnosis of ADHD with autistic traits, and the whole shape of the project shifted. ‘It’s been a poignant moment in my life, it’s made me question everything,’ he says. ‘All my insecurities, I’m starting to understand, were born from this.’
The project became a vehicle for naming what had previously gone unnamed. ‘Prince of Failure is what happens when experiences go unnamed for years,’ Tompkins explains. ‘If you have a shadow in the back of your mind, giving it a name can be a very empowering thing, to separate yourself from it. I’m 42 years old, and I’m discovering a side of myself that has been a mystery for a long time.’
Many people living with ADHD also experience rejection sensitivity, where the mere thought of failing can trigger a debilitating emotional response. Tompkins describes being at war with himself, driven to succeed in the industry on one side, convinced he is an imposter on the other. ‘I want the bright lights; I want the chaos,’ he admits. ‘But on the flipside I have these traits that tell me to step away and hide. I spent years thinking I was failing at things because people found life easy, while I struggled with focus and overthought everything. I felt out of sync with people and I didn’t have the language for it.’
Ortiz has not received a formal diagnosis, but his screening results suggest he should pursue one. Their shared experience of feeling out of step became the emotional core of the record. ‘I’ve had a lot of displacement,’ Ortiz says. ‘I left home, came back home, went through a whole bunch of stuff with that, and you can hear that as the album transforms from warm nostalgia to something more introspective and gothic. The music has reflected our journeys. It’s very personal and sincere.’
Livestreaming, community and the Prince of Failure album’s creative process
One of the more unusual aspects of how this record came together is how publicly it was made. Both Tompkins and Ortiz livestreamed the writing process on Twitch, workshopping ideas in real time in front of their audiences. ‘I’d go on Twitch and livestream me writing an idea to the point I could send it to Dan,’ says Ortiz. ‘Then I’d see that he’s live on Twitch, and he’s writing the vocals for it, sometimes within half an hour.’
For Ortiz, this openness is a direct counter to what he sees as a lazy critique of musicians who object to AI. ‘I see a lot of charges from people, “Musicians are just mad because they can’t gatekeep music any more.” I don’t want to gatekeep anything. We’re showing people that the joy is in the process, not in jumping straight from nothing to finished product for likes and comments.’ Tompkins frames it in terms of community rather than exposure: ‘That community is everything.’
The music itself resists easy categorisation. Ortiz says the prog element lurks ‘in the background for a little bit of spice and complexity,’ while the record moves through dark, vampiric atmospheres, industrial crescendos and what he describes as Holy Fawn-inspired ‘weird post-rock, shoegazey and black metal aesthetics.’ Daedric vocalist Kristyn Hope appears on the track Horizon, delivering what the pair describe as a centrepiece duet.
Ortiz’s return and the long-term vision
There is a secondary story threaded through all of this. When the djent scene crested in the 2010s, Ortiz was regarded as one of its progenitors. Over time, that status faded, and he retreated into corporate music work. ‘Before we did Ruins, I hadn’t picked up a guitar and written anything for years,’ he admits. ‘I was in a proper slump and it’s been the same with this: he’s saved me from feeling like I can’t do it any more. Twice.’
The pair’s previous collaborations include a synthwave record released together as Zeta in 2019, and Ruins, a guitar-centric reworking of Tompkins’s 2019 solo record Castles. Prince of Failure is the deepest the relationship has gone. ‘The more we worked on the album together, the more honest it became,’ says Tompkins. ‘There’s been very few times in my musical career where I’ve clicked with someone as I do with Paul. Without him, it’d be like losing an arm.’
Do not expect tour dates. Prince of Failure will remain a studio project, which is the point. ‘We can really push things if we’re not looking at something that has to be represented on a stage,’ says Ortiz. ‘There’s scope for us to do things that are a lot more experimental.’ The pair already have reams of folders of ideas in development, and Tompkins describes the project as built ‘with a long-term vision in mind.’ Prince of Failure is released on 19 June via KScope.
