Interview: Brussels Alt Rap Duo Holoboy Eskaton 115 Discuss Their Single/Video "Mystery Mekanix"
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“I think the biggest mental breakthrough came after a shared lsd-experience, we had a pretty strong psychedelic experience together and we kind of concluded it by a transcendental music-jam.”
We're totally blown away by your new "Mystery Mekanix" music video; tell us about your creative process for the song's development and what inspired you to write it.
SVDU: The creative process went pretty intuitively as Vinco sent a production he was working on and that inspired me to write on. It was initially to be conceived as a part of his animated series Mystik Mekanix. I tried a variety of texts but ended up choosing one that I had already written five years ago and that fitted with what he was saying. It was a dense text that I had written in a period where I was strongly influenced by my esoteric research and practices, trying to connect with a transcendent principle.
VINCO: Well, regarding the animation of the video and its particular style, there was only one kind of way to continue making movies for me in this first lockdown period, and it was most probably animating stuff you know, I'm used to shoot real time footage and create scenography in studios and work with real people but here the only way to really get the message out there, was clear...I needed to animate.
I'm not an experienced animator you know, I just wanted to fool around with my drawings, and many of them were about space travel.
Aside of the video process, the beat and the texts have been both inspired by multiple conversations with some friends; shout out to my friend Seba also, who inspired the process.
You were both members of the multidisciplinary artist-collective CHPT.01; what led to your decision to come together as a musical duo?
SVDU: It isn’t something that was thought of like one day to another we decided that we would make a musical duo. I think there were many consecutive steps and the fact that we’d been friends this whole time and often creating side by side.
VINCO: Yeah it's true, it kind of gradually happened. Music came to us through our community, we noticed we liked similar stuff, we enjoyed deep conversations. To describe you the atmosphere of that time; We had done quite a few rave parties in the royal park, we lived with musicians who had nice equipment, every day friends would just come over and jam and create or do whatever they'd like at any time at our place, so it was pretty normal to suddenly face a microphone in front of our faces , and thereby we started rhyming and producing.
I think the biggest mental breakthrough came after a shared lsd-experience, we had a pretty strong psychedelic experience together and we kind of concluded it by a transcendental music-jam.
What are some things, people or places that influence your creativity when working on new music?
VINCO: Well I'm really lucky to be part of an amazing platform which is called Knoop, and I have the luck to end up in pretty unconventional places, where I can stay, live, and create. That's why I believe architecture, and abandoned buildings have become a big part of my inspiration. I need to feel as if I can just get into my zone somewhere where nobody really disturbs me, and that can really happen here.
In the midst of a city, we have managed to find a place where there's a lot of tranquility, and momentum to create and do our own stuff. Sometimes I feel like a truck driver roaming alone on the roads you know, sometimes I meet amazing people that I connect with and definitely inspire me, but I can also be really inspired by solitude, the dreams, the subconscious.
SVDU: Apart from the people I collaborate with, artists who generally dare to step out of their personal and collective comfort zones to create something more unique. Emotional entanglements through which I learn a lot also inspire my texts.
How did you come up with the duo's name Holoboy Eskaton 115, and what does it represent?
SVDU: It came out of not trying to take ourselves too seriously and twisting around the common lil’ something that 90 percent of cloud rappers have obtained for.
Going from there with a few twists we then added the Eschaton which was reference to Terence Mckenna and Robert Anton Wilson, two writers who both highly influenced our works. The idea to ‘Immanentize the Eschaton’ could be somewhat translated by bringing heaven on earth, though that is a great simplification.
VINCO: We were laughing with the name-wave of Yung-rappers and Lil-mc's so we thought... shit fam, what do we represent.
We're all about space, futurism, shamanism, psychedelics, philosophy, mystery, alternative ways to live in a progressive society...
So we needed a name to represent all that, so we connected to some keywords such as Holograms, The Eschaton, and element 115 which is also connected to the element Moscovium, and this element has a very special story to it, I'd suggest the readers to dig more into it. In the end we also just wanted to find something nothing too serious.
What can we expect sonically and thematically from the upcoming EP "Imaginatrix", which is dropping very soon?
SVDU: A cosmic bomb. Don't expect just listen.
VINCO: I'm looking forward to drop it; it's a very spaced out EP. So yeah cosmic suits well as a description.