While the band’s visit at the start of the year was by no means their first, it was an introductory to a rather curious piece of musical equipment – a large silver contraption that could either be a film projector or pasta maker. “Ha, well that’s Brian’s, he used to work in film editing, back in the day,” explains soundsmith Graham Walsh. “Back when computers were only just starting to be used in film editing. Back when he was doing it, they were still using real film, recording audio to analogue tape and stuff like that. He learned how to use what they call a film synchroniser, which takes the audio recording of the dialogue and puts it with the video film, because they were recorded with two separate devices. It’s basically just a giant metal contraption that he spools audio film through, with a tape head built into it. You can scrub the tape across the tape head. It sort of sounds like what would happen if you have a record player and just spun the record across the needle manually. Same sort of deal, but it’s a little more linear, and perhaps slightly more unruly. It’s just one of the things we can run through our setups. It’s just a signal generator at that point, and you can get some really interesting sounds from it. If you pull the tape through really slow you can get these deep, subharmonic brooding tones out of it, and if you pull really quickly you get these high squiggles and things. It’s really interesting. Brian’s mastered it, he knows how to work it really well. But we’re not like the Blue Man Group here, we’re not saying, ‘Wow, look at us! Look at all these wacky things!’ But we like anything with a cool sound. We like to experiment.” Graham muses.
It’s this penchant for idiosyncratic musical tools which sets the band apart from their more electronic-inclined contemporaries, an ethos which comes as a result of their rock-orientated roots. “I think the limit is just basically using stuff that is intuitive to us. Brian and I both started out as guitar players in rock bands, but when Holy Fuck began we took the electronic music approach, coming at it as guitar players. Rather than using a laptop, we just had guitar pedals and shitty keyboards lying around. So that’s where we were coming from. There’s nothing wrong with doing it the other way, there are tonnes of amazing electronica artists and musicians who use laptops with everything perfectly in time and synced, easily laid out. But my brain doesn’t necessarily go that way. I just like having each thing in front of me, manipulating it with my hands. My delays won’t be perfectly in time, but that’s cool. There’s always these little rubs that are coming on, and that adds to our sound for sure,” Graham states.
While one could forgive the band for being a tad exhausted of Antipodean shores after such a gruelling schedule at the start of the year, it seems that Holy Fuck a more than a little bit keen to return. “Well it’s great there. The opportunity came up to play the Harvest Festival, and it was too good an opportunity to turn down. The lineup looks great, and we’re honoured to be a part of it,” he raises. “This will be our third time there, every time we’re there the people have been amazing. There’s a very supportive music scene there.”
