High Voltage

In a music world obsessed with gadgets, and technological advances, Toronto’s Holy Fuck are a breath of fresh air. Their analogue and organic approach to dance music has produced two excellent albums, with the release of their third, Latin, due next week. A UK tour is on the horizon, so High Voltage caught up with Brian Borcherdt from the band to discuss the band's lo-fi approach.

Although LP was your second album, it was the first to make an impact in the UK. Due to its success did you find the writing and recording of its follow up more challenging?

This is the first time that I've ever been involved with anything that has had this level of anticipation. Everything else has been a slow, word-of-mouth build. So it's pretty weird and exciting to make a record anticipating that people will actually hear it. At the same time I don't think that we were thinking of a potential audience so much as we just wanted to make something we liked.

You clearly love the improvisation to your sound when playing live, do you find this leads to further song ideas, or is it just one big jamming session?

I think because of the nature of the instrumentation in this band, the unpredictability of lo-fi crappy casios and feed backing mixers, we knew that there would inevitably be some spontaneous stuff happening. We learned early on that the best recordings and best live shows happened as a result of that spontaneous energy. It's never made
sense to try to overly will or control the beast. Playing this music is tremendous fun and it is a fun challenge trying to create songs out of this mess.
 
Fellow Canadians as Caribou or Owen Palett who you have worked with, have both achieved much acclaim on these shores in the last year. Who do you think we should be looking out for from Canada in the coming year in terms of electronic music?

I couldn't say specifically in terms of electronic music but I love a great deal of Canadian music. I've been enjoying local shows from artists like Bishop Morocco, Rat Tail, Huckleberry Friends, and Wyrd Visions. On the East Coast I love Dog Day and Bad Vibrations, from the West Coast there's this band called Terror Bird that I like. Some classics would be Rick White, Chad VanGaalen and Women.
 
I’m intrigued by your use of the Film synchronizer in your music. How did you stumble across such a device and what lead to using it to record and play live?

Well, basically I got a job working in film editing. I heard all kinds of cool sounds there, my favourite being the synchronizer. I loved the way the magnetic tape sounded as it was pulled forward and backwards over tape heads. I always enjoyed recording weird sounds on my four track at home, so I bought one from the film set and took home a bunch of the old audio reels when they were done with them.
 
Relying on older analogue devices have you experienced any live mishaps with the equipment?

I say it's a nightly occurrence where either Graham or myself have to pull something apart in a panic or drop songs from the set simply because something isn't working properly, but that's part of the fun for us. It's not like we wrote Teen Spirit and now have to play it every night to appease the fans. I think people are expecting a little bit of chaos.

I witnessed your 2007 show at Glastonbury on the Thursday night, which is widely considered as one of the best performances of the weekend. Do you feel any pressure approaching this years Glastonbury Festival appearance?

A bit yes, mostly from ourselves though. Playing Glastonbury for us was one of the bigger, more monumental happenings at that time in our career. It meant a lot to be playing such a legendary festival, and that probably influenced our performance. When people responded positively to what we were doing it was a tremendous thrill.  It was probably the first time just about anyone in that part of the world had heard our band. Now that we have had the chance to come back and get to know British audiences we still want to hit the stage with that energy and anxiety. We still want it to mean just as much, I think it will.
 
How have you found the UK crowds to that from the US/Canadian?

The UK was the first place to ever greet us as a real band. We felt very appreciative of that.  Now we've been able to come back home and re-introduce ourselves.  The UK is our cool uncle who encouraged us to keep being weird.

Holy Fuck release their much anticipated 3rd album Latin on 10th May via Young Turks. High Voltage will be hosting their show at the Deaf Institute on 18th May, a show not to missed, with support from SBTRKT and Phantom. Tickets are  £9 adv from www.ticketline.co.uk, by calling 0161 832 1111 or in person at the Deaf Institute.

We're also running a competition with a copies of Latin and a pair of tickets up for grabs for TWO lucky readers. Just e-mail the name of the second Holy Fuck record to richard@highvoltage.org.uk by noon on 18th May and the winners will be picked at random.

TAGS: Holy Fuck, Deaf Institute, Young Turks

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