Swear it all over again

As an instrumental and largely improvised ensemble without guitars, Canadian four-piece Holy Fuck are breaking two of the cardinal rules of rock ‘n’ roll – they have no lyrics and only a loose notion of song structure. Then again, they’re not entirely sure if what they do is rock ‘n’ roll. They’re not even sure if they should be filed under “popular music.”

“The comparisons can get a bit lazy,” complains Brooklyn-based drummer Matt Schultz. “I listen to mostly jazz from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. I also listen to lots of gamelan, lots of dub. I grew up in hardcore so I listen to Bad Brains. It’s sad because I look at my iPod and it’ll be late at night and most of the music I have would be very frenetic really.”
So where does it all come from then? Is Canada a hot bed of similarly offbeat electronica at the moment?
“Well it’s certainly not coming from a scene that shares that kind of sound and aesthetic,” says founder and Casio-player Brian Borcherdt. “But it’s definitely something that grows out of the urban environment. I’m originally from Nova Scotia but the band comes from Toronto. I’ve lived there almost a decade now. Just before moving to Toronto I was sitting playing around on my four-track and keyboards trying to make DJ music with whatever I had laying around the apartment. Then I went to the city and I worked at a music warehouse where [co-founder] Graham worked as well. I found myself regularly sitting down in this grungy warehouse with these other musicians, and being really inspired by them making experimental music and doing their own thing.”
Did that change his approach?
“Well yeah,” Brian admits. “The stuff I was doing then was experimental and weird and I didn’t know where it had a home. I was trying to emulate DJ Shadow at first, and I thought that what I was doing was pretty mainstream but I was actually arriving at some weird conclusions. I was doing things like running Coltrane records through delay pedals. Then I went to Toronto and met all these other people going around doing experimental things as well and I felt more at home. And then we had the idea for the band – we just wanted to try something different using our homespun objects, kids toys and Casios. Making monstrous sounding rock with meagre supplies really appealed to me.”
And it was a supportive environment?
“Yeah, it was always: ‘This will really blow away the guys in the warehouse!’ It was probably the same thought when we came up with the name. We thought the guys in the warehouse would find it funny.”
Is it a good time or a bad time for musicians who want to do their own thing?
“The collapse of the major label system means that a lot of really great music is coming out of the woodwork everywhere,” Brian enthuses. “In Canada anyway, a lot of musicians had the impetus to try and be bold and brash and do their own thing because they weren’t going to get on the radio anyway, they weren’t going to get major label support – people like Peaches, Kid Koala, Death From Above. And we definitely share an affinity for going with our gut feelings. That’s why we all like Neil Young. We’re inspired by some of his wacky decisions and what a stubborn prick he can be. We think that’s something to aspire to.”