DRENCHED IN ACID

Holy Fuck is made up of lots of different people but most of the work is done by a couple called Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh. They never practice, hardly ever shave and wear hoodies that smell of wet dogs.

Three years ago, they formed out of the Dependent Music co-operative which has produced lots of great stuff like Land Of Talk and Wintersleep. They are sort of from Toronto and sort of a supergroup but more in the sense of playing the best bits of all the other Dependent bands’ music than being some weird Broken Social Scene-esque cult shite. Their music attempts to loosely approximate electronic dance music with vintage analogue equipment. As horrific as this could potentially be it sounds like some amazing acid-drenched version of Julian Cope playing Future Days for all it’s worth. The blogger kids give them stick for their name but who really gives a shit about the opinions of dickless 14-year-old boy wonders who can’t reconcile themselves with the fact that they will never get to see Pavement play live. I think it’s kind of cute. Like saying “gosh darn it” when you stub your toe or something.

Vice: There are loads of you on stage when you play but there are only two of you here. What have you done with the rest of the band?

Brian Borcherdt (effects/synths): Everyone is in Holy Fuck. It is a constantly morphing cast. It changes over time because we are all friends and we can’t handle conflict. The moment things start to conflict it’s time for something new. Graham and me are just the captains of the vessel. We are determined to go down with the ship.

Why bother trying to make dance music with no electronic equipment? That just seems like a pain in the ass.

Graham Walsh (effects/synths): We don’t want our music to sound more dated than it has to. By using modern devices you have too much control over the end result. By using Casios, toy keyboards, old film-editing gear, shitty mixers or whatever, we are at the mercy of our own crap limitations. Also, I don’t know how to use hi-fi electronics and have no attention span.

I heard that you never rehearse. That just seems lazy.

Graham: We’d like to rehearse. At first we didn’t practice because it was fun just seeking out something that might have been there without thinking about it.

Brian: Now we just all live in different cities.  Fortunately we connect well. A couple nights in on a tour we’ll already have songs. Sort of.

What would be the holiest fuck? Fucking the Virgin Mary? That would be pretty holy.

Brian: Didn’t God already do that? 

True. Who would win in a fuck-off, you guys or Fucked Up?

Graham: You mean where someone holds a starting pistol in the air and upon firing it everyone has to fuck as much as possible? In that case, Fucked Up would definitely win.  Mostly on account of their low standards. They’d fuck anything.

JAMES KNIGHT
We asked Damian from Fucked Up what he thought about that last quote and he said: “I would not fuck around with anything. For example I would never fuck with shit like Metric.” Holy Fuck have an album entitled LP forthcoming on Young Turks. myspace.com/holyfuck

< PREVIOUS

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

NEXT >