Ten years after first polarizing audiences in the dank basements and dimly-lit dives of Chicago’s underground music scene, Hotegaia returns to their primal form with elevated urgency. For their latest release, Next Radial, multi- instrumentalist Nicholas Botka exchanges waves of dissonant guitar for cascades of synthesizers, while pulsing electronic rhythms replace the pounding percussion of earlier recordings. Longtime collaborator, Fred Blanc, steadies the wheel with driving basslines, morphing jagged edges into concrete form. These instrumentals are textured with layers of vocals, weaving disaffected drawl to desperate howl, three churning voices resolving harmony from cacophony.

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Next Radial examines the concept of change and our capacity to evolve without folding back into experience, the possibility of growth without reverting to an earlier form. Lead vocalist, Jason Thayer, continues to explore whether we can move beyond our own corrosive habits – whether we can forge new neural pathways, or if we are locked into our own patterns of self-destruction. Next Radial’s construction mirrors this question. Old songs are revisited and rearranged, words from the past given new context, our histories caught in relentless forward motion.