The last time we spoke to guitarist and music producer Subhagata Singha aka Rivu The Incident 2019 didn’t have a release date. Almost a year later the 26-year-old has released his album on March 20 on all streaming platforms. Within three days his second album had 1,100 streams and and The Incident 2019 is “currently second under the Top Selling Albums category in OKListen!” and Rivu is first under the Top Selling Artist Category.

What can you tell us about The Incident 2019?

The Incident 2019 actually comes as two different releases — the album release, and the eponymous special edition single release. The album release has nice tracks on it — a four-part long-form composition, two medium-sized compositions, and three short interludes. The thought for this album came to me during January 2018 while suffering a weird rare condition in a hospital bed, when I realised I still wanted to compose more music in the same concept and world as my first album The Incredible Journey Of Light. This album is an expansion or a sequel in a way to the first album. The name The Incident 2019 is a reference to a fictional event that is referred to in the first album’s immersive packaging.

What can the listeners expect?

The eponymous track about the state of the real world and an apocalyptic event ranges from rock-fusion to heavy metal (djent, even) all the way to lush orchestral cinematic... scattered with audio from various speeches and news audio from the real world as well as poetry.

Starquake Sonata, on the other hand is my love letter to old video game OSTs like Megaman and Street-Fighter! It’s upbeat, fierce, and video-gamey! Dance-y even maybe?

I see the final track, The Incredible Journey Of Light 3 as a curtain call. There are themes from the first album reinterpreted and presented in a new light, while injecting some heavier metal elements into it.

The interludes range from sound design to lush synth-scapes acting as bridges in the story.

Does anyone else feature on the album?

Whale In The Pond producer and multi-instrumentalist Shireen Ghosh has played some brilliant flute parts on Starquake Sonata. Apart from her, there are some short cameo dialogue performances by Dana Roy, Paloma Majumder, and Deep Phoenix on the album, in the interlude tracks. There’s also a tiny audio clip from Whale In The Pond’s new song Dofon on the album as well.

I’ve been too close to this album for over two years. I’d love to find out what surprises people without creating any further expectations. That’s kind of the fun of the event of an album release for me.

Is there anything new you’ve tried on this album?

Lots of fun music theory stuff that excites me. The Incident 2019 was written by doing an unconventional thing of subdividing beats into seven subdivisions — where the norm is to subdivide in groups of two and four... or even three and six which are more conventional. The subdivisions in groups of seven are called septuplets.

Starquake Sonata almost strictly follows the structure of classical sonata form with three sections — an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. I do take some liberties with it, like a lot of composers do, but it’s something I’ve never tried before.

Tell us about the cover picture of the album?

In the implied story of the album, The Incident 2019 is about a catastrophic or apocalyptic event that takes place in the world that significantly changes the course of the planet. The tracks uses symbolism to get that across.

The album release uses an image of the Fat Man atomic bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki.

This is a good moment to talk about the special edition release, which has an alternate cover. It uses the image of a charred Eucalyptus leaf, illustrated by Alisha Dutt Islam, as a symbol for the Australia bush-fires. All profits from the single release will be sent to fund causes that are working on relief, rebuilding etc. at different points in time, depending on the need of the hour.