Holy Fuck @ The Bakery, Perth(18/11/11)

Mon 21st Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

A simple introductory guide to Holy Fuck.

Step one: Do not buy their records (yet); even if they’re probably very good.
Step two: Cast away any other preconceptions and avoid reading this and all future reviews.
Step three: Let go of any plaguing conservatism over two tiny little words. Don’t be cynical about shock power but at the same time don’t be the hipster who’s there because you like your beverages edgy.

Clean your mind and invite your best pair of discerning ears; the party is always at its finest when you don’t know what’s around the corner or down the garden path. Holy Fuck resonates the feeling that will erupt inside when you see the Canadian four-piece for the very first time; live in the flesh with little to no clue of what’s to come. Add four to five to starting-to-loose-count-of-how-many-parts alcohol and the fine surrounds of Perth’s sexiest playground; The Bakery, and you’ve got yourself an evening of all proportions.

Kicking off the proceedings was live electronic instrumental hip-hop beat maker Naik sporting a fine movember moustache along with his usual tight knit drumming companion. Swapping between trippy guitar licks and live samples, it’s the finer intricacies and deep grooves behind Naik’s music that provide his audience with a platter of aural pleasure.

Up next Usurper of Modern Medicine continued the trend with a psychedelic slant across grooving live instrumental electronics. With a fine display of visually hypnotic backdrops to the entrancing extended jams, the band always manage to bring something new but always enticing to the table. Their final number filled hearts and set them racing as a euphoric beat shook all sights and sounds with the venue heating up quickly. If Life Is Noise was a matchmaking service, show promoter, Dave Cutbush (armed with a diploma in love) would have married more couples than a Vegas roadside church; both acts were the perfect entree for what was to come.

Holy Fuck is a breath of fresh air in a music industry that often widely celebrates trends and rehashments. The energetic Canadian four-piece craft an electronic live show with no sampling or laptops or anything that remotely tends to define the general premise of being an electronic act. Combining guitars and drums with toy synthesizers, a film synchroniser (god knows how that can play a part) and all sorts of electrical knick-knacks that omit sound into a patch bay of tape delays and manipulating pedals the band manage to combine all this and build up into immense, uncompromising grooves; Holy Fuck delivered.

There is a lot that could go wrong with a set for this band; and it did. With the squealing sound of a drum machine losing its shit midway through a song to the shaking head of their sound guy, it’s not hard to see why. Debacles aside, the complexities always manged to tie back to the simple and effective elements and these are what really evoke a primal energy from its audience. Plus it’s quite rock n roll with mistakes and mishaps to keep things real. Biting microphones and yelling layers of incoherent vocals into incredible walls of sound, quite often you were transformed into completely new realms of mind. But not once did it ever feel too cluttered, which is where many others in this particular genre fall apart.

In many ways, Holy Fuck was like being able to look inside a crazy underground laboratory and find a party in full swing with half naked professors setting their whiskers alight as they pour chemicals from beaker to beaker. They are a band that would be easy to criticise but truly can’t be praised until seen live; and many walked away from The Bakery with minds imploded.

(... And then you should buy their LP)