Listen: Hoirong’s Noisy New Full-Length ‘Mwah’

Hoirong live in Bengaluru in 2015. Photo: Fahama Sawant

For anyone who’s keeping count, Mwah, the 14-track third full-length album by reckless rockers Hoirong, looks like their 11th release since 2013, when the project started out as Bengaluru guitarist-vocalist Kamal Singh’s lo-fi/no-budget solo project. A full band started taking shape in early 2014 and it currently includes guitarist Akhil Sood, bassist Avinash Manoli and drummer Akshat Nauriyal.

Hoirong is very much a band now, by the sound of Mwah, which was produced by Delhi-based Viraj Mohan [from electronic music act Karajimo] and features live drums, also recorded and edited in Delhi by producer-guitarist Keshav Dhar [from prog metal band Skyharbor]. The result is much more polished, but make no mistake, it still features Hoirong’s trademark mindlessness and sense of irony. Nauriyal said of Singh’s songwriting in a previous interview, “Kamal is a mad scientist. He’s got this knack for destroying things, he keeps them from being too peachy by tweaking things to sound dissonant. His melodies are in a pop format, but he presents them with a lot of thorns.”

From the abrasive edge on songs like “Peace” and the melancholic “Grant Hill Drinks Sprite,” Mwah gets brutal, with reckless punk energy on “Dhakan”. “Two to Tango” has the sardonic hook of “Hey, you fucking idiot, clap your hands / lift your hands in the air because we know that you don’t care”.  Singh adds a lot of noise to samples of Indian wedding music on “Peacock” and gets even more discordant on “Puke.” There’s a more layered approach, punk approach on “Please” that gets adequately angry to get a mosh pit going.

Hoirong launches Mwah today at Summer House Cafe in New Delhi, alongside Karajimo and a special one-off set by Sood and Nauriyal’s prog band Another Vertigo Rush. Event details here.

Listen to Mwah below.