Canadian Electronic Rock Band Holy Fuck recently talked to ai love music via email about their musical journey, how their 2021 has been, and releasing their new single “Lost Cool” with Madrid-based Electropop artist Lucia Tacchetti. Holy Fuck, composed of Brian Borcherdt, Graham Walsh, Matt Schulz, and Matt “Punchy” McQuaid, have always been happy to plow a distinctly lone furrow. Playing by their own rules for the past 15 years of their career and five albums, they have 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.
Continue to find out how “Lost Cool” was written and what did it first start oof? Also, how was it working with Lucia Tacchetti? While reading, make sure to check out Holy Fuck’s newest single down below. Let me know what you think in the comment.
Please introduce the band! How did Holy Fuck come to be?
Holy Fuck are a band of misfit toys from various parts of North America. We came to be in the early 2000s. At that time Brian was messing around with toy keyboard runs through his guitar pedals and Graham was experimenting with samplers, keyboards, and guitars. Graham started playing guitar with Brian and they both realized they shared a love of making music with the Casio SK1 sampling keyboard. Brian started “Holy Fuck” as a side project, and Graham joined shortly afterward, and it’s been almost 17 years making noise since!
What musical genres and/or artists influence the band’s music?
There are no real specific genres or artists who influence us. We’re fans of lots of artists and styles of music. Over the years of making music, you hopefully find your own voice and musical “language” with which you can filter all your influences through and still sound like yourself.
As 2021 is winding down, what are things you look forward to in 2022? Any challenges?
We look forward to playing shows again and seeing each other in person. The band all live in different cities, so the only real-time we’re together is when we’re on tour. Once we’re back on tour we can get back to writing music together in the same room.
Let’s talk about “Airport Dreams” a little bit. What is it about and how was it to work with Sarah Bonito? (I love Kero Kero Bonito!)
We were working on all these song ideas during the pandemic and started sharing some of them with other artists to see if they’d sing on them. One of those was Sarah Bonito. She actually sang “Airport Dreams” to a whole other song idea we’d had, but her vocals inspired a totally different idea for us, so we built a whole other song around her vocal performance. She’s super fun, amazingly talented, and very open to us trying things out around her vocal performance.
What inspired you to write the track ‘Lost Cool’?
We weren’t able to meet up in person to work on music, so we ended up sharing musical ideas online with each other and building up songs remotely. That process started as we’d typically do with a tiny musical idea that gets fleshed out and built upon. “Lost Cool” started as the main synth-riff.
It came about from just messing around one day, looking to come up with something that sounded like it might’ve come off an early “french synth-wave” compilation. Regardless of that, the riff still sounded cool, and it was really fun to play along with, so it seemed like a great musical idea to put in the “ideas” folder and see what the other guys could do with it.
How was it working with Lucia Tacchetti?
Lucia was amazing to work with even though we’d never met or talked in person! Everything was through email, but she was very creative and open to ideas and trying things. She heard a bunch of ideas we’d been working on and chose that particular song to sing. We were definitely on the same wavelength because her voice and whole vibe fit extremely well to the song.
Holy Fuck
What types of sounds, instrumentation, melodies, or textures did you want to incorporate with this song?
The main synth riff itself was pretty engaging to play along with on its own. It was like an anchor of sorts, which was helpful, and it took to all sorts of musical sounds getting layered on top, but still rooted the song to something. In the end, it is about making it the best song possible, so it wasn’t about incorporating any specific types of sounds or textures, but more about creating a fun and interesting journey.
