Holy Fuck w/ Moon King

Canadian quartet Holy Fuck have always been happy to plow a distinctly lone furrow. Never
ones to chase the limelight or hop on any genre-wagon that happens to be passing by,
they’ve played by their own rules for the past part of 15 years and five albums.

It’s for that reason that they’ve become one of the country’s finest, and most influential,
exports, with their widescreen, technicolour, crescendo-heavy and highly danceable sound
often finding itself imitated, but never bettered.

Even after attracting mainstream attention thanks to appearing on the soundtracks to both
Breaking Bad and Mr Robot, the band has continued to go against the grain in a cultural
landscape that that prioritises and lionises the safe and predictable over the marginal and
single-minded.

Arriving a moment where attention spans are shot and anxieties are going into overdrive,
Deleter, Holy Fuck’s fifth studio LP, is a typically full-bodied affair. Polyrhythmic and pleasurefocused,
Deleter sees Brian Borcherdt, Graham Walsh, Matt Schulz, and Matt “Punchy”
McQuaid taking their signature super-dense sound to new creative heights, seamlessly fusing
the gauzy drive of krautrock and deep house’s dreamy ineffability, expertly blending purring
motorik percussion with the sort of fuggy synthetic fizz and tang that so often sends clubbers
into states of unselfconscious rapture.

From the thrusting minimalism of opener ‘Luxe’ through to the triumphant chug of closing
track ‘Ruby’, via club-ready rollocker ‘Free Gloss’ and the cosmic clatter of ‘San Sebastian’,
Deleter is a record that joins the Holy Fuck dots in fine style, sounding like no one else in the
business.

Ideological inspiration has come from some slightly unlikely sources, such as the long-running
Canadian television show Electric Circus. Effectively a club-friendly version of British cultural
mainstay Top of the Pops, Electric Circus, in Holy Fuck's eyes at least, is the crystalistion of a
musical era that spanned Technotronic to TLC- a touch point for a group who've always tried
to make people dance in their own way.

As Brian puts it, Deleter is partly an attempt to "make peace" with the dance music that was
popular during his adolesence - an adolesence largely spent in the company of Black
Sabbath rather than Black Box."We were trying to step out of the corner we've been painted
into," he says. "Now we're more in the dance world than ever. And this is the kind of dance
music I like."

More than just a musical influence, the programme’s freewheeling sense of raw selfexpression
- from the hyper-colour sartorial ensembles donned by audience members and
dancers alike to the totally unselfconscious dancing on display episode after episode - has
bled into the hyperkinetic energy which drives Deleter on and on into hitherto uncharted sonic
territory.

Both Deleter and Electric Circus explore what happens when humanity and technology
coalesce into one big, semi-organic celebration of the joys of spontaneity, repetition, and
individuality.

Staying true to your own identity was crucial to the group during the LP’s gestation. “From the
very beginning the approach has been lets try and make something so musical out of
something that isn't intended to be musical in the first place” Brian says.

By this he means that the one constant in a career that has always put the focus firmly on
moving into uncharted territory with each new record, is a fearless approach to musicianship,
with the intention always having been to find a way of accessing the inherent humanity of
technology.