BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition - January 2020

W
hen Holy Fuck’s Brian
Borcherdt is working
on music, he dances.
He prefers to be on his
feet, moving, rather than
sitting still in a chair. It
helps boost his creative
energy. Lately, he does
it every day—not just
in his basement studio,
but with his family. They
recently moved from
Toronto to a rural part
of Nova Scotia, the
province he grew up in.
When there’s not much
to do, they put on records and dance. His
14-month-old daughter especially loves it.
“She understands it,” Borcherdt says, over
the phone. “No one taught her. It’s just inherent
to the human experience, I guess. We
hear music and immediately we start moving.”
Maybe that’s one of the things we continue to
retain, he contemplates. “Maybe that is where
a lot of our freedom comes from. I think there
is some form of protest in that. In a way we’re
saying, ‘I’m not working right now.’”
Being physically engaged has always been
important to the Toronto-based band’s inner
mechanisms, and the theme of intentional
disconnection surfaces often on the group’s
newest album, Deleter, which rejects the concept
of swallowing the technology we come
into contact with whole. Instead—through idiosyncratic
sonics that combine euphoric 90s
electronica with loose, rhythmic beats and,
by design, encourage freeing movement—it
advocates for a different outcome, where we
can still retain autonomy over who we are,
and the art we want to consume.
In the past, Holy Fuck have resisted
working with vocalists, but this time around,
the songs just felt right, as did the musical
landscape.
It seems like a better time now to do
this kind of thing, Borcherdt explains. “Give
people interesting one-offs that sound a little
different and take bigger risks. It’s something
I look forward to doing more, actually.”
Deleter features a handful of carefully
selected collaborations, including post-punk
musician Angus Andrews on the standout
sort of-title track “Deleters,” an infectious,
buzzy stomp; Pond frontman Nicholas
Allbrook on the ebullient “Free Gloss,” and
Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor on “Luxe.” For
“Luxe,” which tinges classic house textures
with a folksy warble, Taylor contributed his
vocals through a 1940s-era Voice-o-Graph,
a coin-operated phonograph booth that
scratches audio onto vinyl.
It’s estimated there are only two left in existence:
one in Liverpool and the other at Jack
White’s Third Man studio in Nashville, where
Taylor recorded. Along with a warm vintage
quality, the equipment brings a fascinating
conceptual addition to Deleter that leverages
history to reflect the advances it represented
in the 40s, and remind us how similarly
uncharted the territory feels now.
“I don’t want to get caught up in that
‘thing,’ where I’m just mad at the way things
are changing—an old man who doesn’t like
what the kids are into or something like that,”
Borcherdt adds. “I think part of what makes
things exciting is that things will change. It
doesn’t mean we have to jump headfirst into
them. I think it just takes a little precaution.”
In fact, the Toronto-based electronic
music group is known for how they eschew
genre tradition by using live instrumentation
and non-instruments instead of laptops and
software. When they were starting out, the
approach was, in part, a reaction to how their
contemporaries were exploring a kind of limitless
technology in their music. For Borcherdt,
infiniteness is hard to wrap his head around.
“I like limitations,” he laughs. “That’s part of
what draws me to music: trying my best to do
something. I didn’t study music or anything,
but I’ve always loved it. Music has always
been my number one passion, but I’m coming
at it somewhat as a luddite. I like to pick up a
guitar or whatever to try to pour as much of
myself as I can into it, to try to make it good
as it could be.”
Borcherdt’s enthusiasm informs a question
of where that passion-to-challenge relationship
goes as technology changes and
if there’s a way to subvert the medium, so it
maintains a struggle. “I still want to struggle
when I get onstage,” Borcherdt continues. “I
still want to struggle in the studio. I still want
everything to be really difficult because I feel
like that’s where some of our best creativity
comes from.”
It persists as a fundamental consideration
for Holy Fuck, especially today where nearly
all of our day-to-day interactions happen
within a digitized realm. Responding to that as
a musician is difficult. With all the music in the
world at our fingertips, who’s really listening?
“We’re actually probably reaching more
people in one sense, so that’s kind of exciting,”
Borcherdt says. When it comes to the
time and sacrifice it takes to create an album,
though, it can feel disproportionate. “It leaves
you wondering how many people are making
a strong connection.”
Borcherdt grew up during a time where
finding common ideals among his peers was
challenging, especially in an area without
much exposure to what he was looking for. “It
created this thirst for inspiration, but it also
created an appreciation for those things that
I did find along the way,” he says. “Whether it
meant picking up albums and spending that
hard-earned money on them at the record
store, getting home and not even really liking
it. You know, that disappointment,” he laughs.
“And we’ve maybe forgotten what that feels
like, disappointment. But there’s also that elation
and sense of ownership, that something
can really represent to you. I think about that
so often because [now] we have everything.”
With expansive technological landscapes
come the perplexity that we don’t exactly
know who is controlling algorithms or how
our data is actually being used. Borcherdt
worries if the ambiguous vastness of it all
is more dangerous than we realize, and we
might not fully understand how vulnerable we
are. “I think that our best protection of that is
just being aware of it,” he continues. “I enjoy
having the option of unplugging and I enjoy
having the option of deleting.” ,
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Photo : Darrole Palmer
JANUARY 2020 BEATROUTE 19