Exclusive: HOIA Premieres New Single Featuring Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree)

• Tweet
• Pin It

Experimental beyond expectations, HOIA is an infusion of musical interests by Prateek Rajagopal. Popularly known for being a virtuoso guitarist, budding film composer and writer/producer for death metal legions GUTSLIT and Indian/American prog metal supergroup The Minerva Conduct, his interest in genres and art forms beyond metal gave rise to HOIA, inspired by Avant-garde, progressive rock, experimental and industrial music. Prog Sphere is premiering a new single today. Titled “Electric Wizard,” it features guest appearances from Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree) on bass, and Wojtek Deregowski on drums. Stream it below.

Commented Prateek Rajagopal: “This song came about in a funny, funny way. I was eating burgers with my mum on vacation, and the restaurant had this smooth-jazz track playing in the background. The next day, I sat to demo out a song for my death metal band, but all these jazz influences that were triggered from the previous day just wouldn’t leave. So I began by programming some piano sketches, and within a day or two the song was done! Of course, it’s not a jazz track by any means, but random unsolicited inspiration & places can do funny things! The brief (for drummer Wojtek Deregowski & bassist Colin Edwin) was very simple – just do your thing and improvise like you’re in a jam room. The entire drum section till the piano-drone break was performed in a single take, and that’s exactly what was required for this song!

“Electric Wizard is followed by ‘Part II’ on the album which I wrote a year later and should ideally be played together in one sitting, but I wanted to preserve the fact that this was written in a completely different headspace and hence split it into 2 parts!“

After releasing two EPs with HOIA, Prateek is all set to release his debut album titled Scavenger on April 19th, 2019. The record has a more sophisticated songwriting approach compared to his previous releases, albeit still very ‘prog,’ and also features Prateek as a vocalist for the first time. The instruments used on the album are unlike his other projects, using samples of rotating fans and vehicle sounds, analog synthesizers and digital manipulation along with organic instruments like guitars (acoustic, electric), piano and strings.

Says Prateek, “The album deals with human-sentimentality concepts like nostalgia, demise, anxiety and the need to ‘scavenge’ to survive, bubbled in fictitious concepts as individual stories. It isn’t a concept album, but there’s a loose relation across the individual stories.”

HOIA’s Scavenger has been in the works for over 2 years and clocks in at 33 minutes. The track-list is as follows:

1. Write Across
2. Escape Orb
3. Electric Wizard
4. Part II
5. Scavenger

Pre order the album from Bandcamp here.

• Tweet
• Pin It