HOIA: SCAVENGER
Mumbai based guitar virtuoso Prateek Rajagopal talks with Big Blend Radio about his debut album “Scavenger” and the foundation of HOIA, an experimental infusion of his musical interests.
Popularly known for being a virtuoso guitarist, budding film composer and writer/producer for death metal legions “GUTSLIT” & 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.
After releasing two EPs with HOIA, Prateek is all set to release his debut album titled “Scavenger.” 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.”
Although he is the primary songwriter, Prateek approached Colin Edwin of “Porcupine Tree” & Wojtek Deregowski (a reputed session musician from Poland) to perform bass and drums respectively.
In support of the release Prateek has plans to tour and the members are also willing to perform, but his multiple commitments in Mumbai and other projects are holding it back. A music/visualization video (by illustrator/director Aniruddh “Thebigfatminimalist” Mehta) for “Write Across,” a drum play-through of “Electric Wizard,” and an album stream video are all ready.
In closing Prateek has this to say, “The album deals with simple human emotions. However, writing them as stories felt natural and subtle, and thinking about characters/plots made the process very enjoyable. I hope that people understand the metaphors and Easter eggs too, since everyone goes through similar human emotions. So if people relate with the stories, they might feel better and less lonely, and in turn feel hopeful about life and this world.”
More here: https://hoiatv.bandcamp.com/album/scavenger
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