Gig Preview: Hoirong To Play Debut Gig At Turquoise Cottage, New Delhi

(From left) Akhil Sood, Akshat Nauriyal, Samar Grewal and Kamal Singh

About a year ago, Kamal Singh, of now-defunct post-rock band Lounge Piranha, released the album Princess of Woe And Her Vampire Hound Posse under the moniker Hoirong. His grungy, alternative solo project has since expanded to a band that includes Delhi-based Samar Grewal on vocals and guitar, as well as prog rock band Another Vertigo Rush members Akshat Nauriyal and Akhil Sood on drums and guitar respectively. Says Singh elaborating on the evolution of Hoirong, “I don’t think it’s possible to play [this music] without a band.” Singh moved to Delhi from Bengaluru to study music therapy last year, soon after releasing his album. Says Singh, “At the back of my mind, I was hoping to get something together while I was here. I think the cool part about it is that they [other members] liked what I’d already recorded. They understood it and they all wanted to do stuff like that for a long time. We all just seem to be in the same space.”

The band formed in January after Nauriyal and Sood got in touch with Singh to be a part of Hoirong. Sood, who is a fan of Singh’s former band Lounge Piranha, had recommended Nauriyal for Hoirong before eventually joining the band himself. Says Nauriyal, “I heard the album some time ago and I really I dug his sound, it was fresh and unlike the stuff you generally find here. It’s noisy and dirty and exactly what I liked. You could tell he was coming from the same background that I was.” Singh later roped in Grewal, who used to jam with him in Bengaluru and the four of them began rehearsing as often as they could. They started experimenting with new sounds while sticking to the idea of what was on the album, adding layers to Singh’s raw, yet catchy hooks. Singh adds, “I didn’t want to replicate the album as such, so some of the songs you can recognize, but they aren’t exactly the same. Eventually, we’ll start writing new material. Right now the focus is on playing the album live.”

The band, which has been jamming together for a couple of months now, will debut this week in Delhi. Unable to find a spot to gig, Singh agreed to play for free and added Delhi lo-fi/experimental rock act Begum to the lineup. Hoirong will play its debut full-length album in its entirety at the gig, possibly throwing in a few of their cheeky covers that Singh had previously uploaded, including Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” or Indian rapper Baba Sehgal’s “Aaja Meri Gaadi Mein Baith Jaa.”

Hoirong will perform at Turquoise Cottage in New Delhi on February 27^th. 
Entry: Free