THE PROG INTERVIEW
Lasse Hoile is a big man. With his coal-black attire, solemn features and deep Danish mumble, he towers like someone you’d expect to meet in a dark forest – and looks even taller sitting at the low table in the Greenwich cafe where we meet. He drinks an oat milk latte, seemingly a hipster hallmark but it’s actually more reflective of his ongoing struggle with Crohn’s disease.
Following the death of his (British) father in December, Hoile has been at his house dealing with the aftermath – which, through numerous admin and communication breakdowns, has been “a fucking nightmare”. He’s open and good-natured in conversation, but his present situation weighs heavily in his voice.
“He [my father] died of an aneurysm in the stomach that burst due to hypertension… so he was probably mad at something,” he laughs weakly.
Born in 1973 in Aarhus, Denmark, Hoile’s introduction to what one might deem ‘the dark side’ began with horror films at the local cinema. As a young adult he lived in Greenland for four years, where he acquired mailorder heavy metal demo tapes that were advertised in magazines, it being the pre-internet age. Through that he became friends with Nordic black metallers Mayhem, now the subject of a new film, Lords Of Chaos.
“He [singer ‘Dead’] killed himself with a shotgun and his friends sent me pictures of him with some bones and then Euronymous [guitarist] got killed by this guy called Burzum [aka Varg Vikernes].
I have all those emails, letters and postcards and shit they sent me.”
Ultimately, however, Hoile found his true calling when he discovered Porcupine Tree – centred on a friendship with Steven Wilson that began in the 90s and has continued through years of arresting artwork, videos and live visuals. It’s fair to say that Wilson’s presence and impact would be quite different were it not for Hoile.
We’re meeting today in the run-up to the release of his latest, a richly illustrated, album-by-album treasury of his work with Porcupine Tree. Carl Glover, designer and longtime Hoile/Wilson collaborator and friend (also the brains behind artwork for Led Zeppelin, King Crimson and The Rolling Stones, among others) sits across from us and offers the most succinct explanation of their creative process on these records: “You try to make it look like the album sounds.”
