>>PREVIEW
HOLY FUCK
Saturday, September 30
The Den (U of C)
The first time I saw Holy Fuck play, I thought to myself "Fuck dude, I can’t fucking believe that these guys do this every show!" Not that they can, but that they would.
The band began with a disastrous showcase by Brian Borcherdt at the CMJ festival in New York. Alone with his Casio keyboards and effects pedals, technology let him down when a portion of his gear didn’t work, resulting in an unintentional sonic mess. But sonic messes can be a subjective thing, and after playing a show like that, Borcherdt decided to form a dance band, adding bass and drums and later more keyboards. Why? Because it’s not so much that there’s no place to go but up – more like there’s nothing left to fuck up.
And listeners, not the least of whom is ex-member of the legendary hip hop group Anti-Pop Consortium, Beans, have been taking it in just the right way.
"Our first show (as a band was) at Pop Montreal… Beans was there," explains Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh. "He saw us play and then he called up Brian and said that he was playing Coachella and wanted us to be his backing band."
Obviously, there is a level of quality to the recorded improvisations that comprise the band’s self-titled album. It’s not total chaos, the band admits to having more songs than jams, even if a "song" consists of a theme that they improvise within.
This quality, however, seems to be inversely proportional to the quality of their keyboards – the shittier the better.
"One of my favourite keyboards doesn’t even have a name on it," continues Walsh. "It’s like something that you’d get from a dollar store. But if you put it through a huge P.A., it sounds amazing. You couldn’t program something like that in a sampler or drum machine… it’s this little fragile piece of plastic that’s so, so volatile. Because it’s a piece-of-shit toy."
Basing your sound around something so sketchy has its dangers, though. Potentially, if one signature keyboard dies and there is no back-up, the band can no longer play the corresponding song. For that reason, Holy Fuck occasionally acquires doubles of these rare keyboards.
But there are some fun aspects to being known for your unusual instrumentation. The group has used a 35mm film synchronizer as an instrument, for example. Such distinctly recognizable equipment has become as much a part of the live show as the sounds that they create.
"I had an experience the other night where I picked up a piece of gear and (the audience) knew exactly what song we were going to play. So, it’s been really cool (this tour)."
Featuring members of bands like King Cobb Steelie, Wintersleep and Blue Rodeo, one might wonder why the individual members of Holy Fuck would want to risk their reputations by committing to something as dodgy and unpredictable as Holy Fuck.
"We all have other song-oriented bands that we play in," offers Walsh, "and in some ways they can be way more stressful, because I get up with my guitar and I have to remember a song that we wrote a long time ago… It’s like, ‘Aw, shit – I totally flubbed it up!’ But with this you don’t give a shit, you just go with it… and that’s when you get your best stuff!"
And as their growing fanbase can attest – holy fuck, is that ever the truth. |
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