Holy Fuck Return With New Single "Luxe"
(ft. Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor);
On Tour In North America NOW;
Photo Credit: Finn O'Hara
(L-R: Matt McQuaid, Brian Borcherdt, Graham Walsh, Matt Schulz)
Holy Fuck return today with new single "Luxe", the seminal Canadian group's first new music since 2017's "Bird Brains" EP.
Born out of a desire to revisit old and trusted methods of creating Holy Fuck songs - by experimenting live on stage to create new music - "Luxe" is an epic, sprawling beast of a track that started life as a spontaneous encore at a show in Luxembourg, Belgium. Once the early elements of the track had been worked on in the studio they sent it, amongst a collection of other demos, to their good friend and casual musical mentor Kieran Hebden - aka Four Tet - who immediately picked up on "Luxe" as a stand-out. They then invited Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor to listen with a view to providing the vocal. He not only jumped at the opportunity, but headed off to Jack White's Third Man Studio in Nashville to record his part on his extremely rare 1947 Voice-O-Graph.
Comprising the talents of Toronoto-based musicians Brian Borcherdt, Graham Walsh, Matt McQuaid and Matt Schultz, Holy Fuck have always been happy to plow a distinctly lone furrow. Never ones to chase the limelight or hop on any genre-wagon that happens to be passing by, they've played by their own rules for the past part of 15 years and five albums (2005's Holy Fuck, 2007's LP, 2010's Latin & 2016's Congrats). It's for that reason that Holy Fuck have become one of North America's and most influential exports with their widescreen, technicolour, crescendo-heavy and highly danceable sound; often finding itself imitated, but never bettered. It's a point proved (with a bang!!) on "Luxe" - out today on AWAL.
The band explain the track's genesis:
"Among more literal translations, 'Luxe' is the short form of Luxembourg - the city in which the nexus of the song was created. On this particular night, during soundcheck, we had a pulsing minimal synth loop we'd been tinkering around with. (We were listening to lots of TRAX Records stuff on that tour.) We decided that if the crowd demanded an encore we'd go for it. 'Luxe' was the result. Or - as it was then called on the live recorded MP3 - 'Luxembourg Encore'. Once home from tour we took all the live demos back to the drawing board. We shared everything with our friend Kieran Hedben aka Four Tet. His always-intuitive advice was that he heard a great club track in his "very favorite thing here": Luxembourg Encore".
The next moment of discovery came when Graham suggested the band scrap Brian's vocals and give it to Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip. When we presented Alexis with the concept our reference notes to him, based around Brian's temporary vocals, were 'like an old sample you'd dig up off an old folk record... and approached more like a classic house track'. He responded, 'We could try to record the vocal in a Voice O Graph booth (an obsolete 1940s coin operated phonograph booth) if we can access one...'. As far as we're aware, there are only two in the world - one in Liverpool (that apparently doesn't work anymore) and the other at Jack White's Third Man studio in Nashville. And that is where Alexis sang 'I'd like to scrap all of this and start over again.' Fittingly, it was New Year's Eve."
Holy Fuck - who built their reputation on their kinetic live shows - continue their extensive North American tour with Hot Chip this month, they are pleased to have confirmed details of their own intimate UK & European headline shows at the end of October. See below for all dates.
HOLY FUCK ON TOUR:
19th Sep - Boston, MA @ Royale w/ Hot Chip
10th Sep - Montreal, QC @ MTELUS w/ Hot Chip
12th Sep - Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre w/ Hot Chip
13th Sep - Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre w/ Hot Chip
14th Sep - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue w/ Hot Chip
17th Sep - Vancouver, Canada @ Vogue Theatre w/ Hot Chip
18th Sep - Seattle, WA @ The Showbox w/ Hot Chip
19th Sep - Seattle, WA @ The Showbox w/Hot Chip
20th Sep - Portland, PR @ Roseland Theatre w/ Hot Chip
24th Sep- Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst w/ Hot Chip
25th Sep - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre w/ Hot Chip
27th Sep - Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall w/ Hot Chip
19th Oct - Cardiff, UK @ Swn Festival
20th Oct - Berlin, Germany @ Maschinehaus
21st Oct - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
22nd Oct - Paris, France @ Espace
23rd Oct - London, UK @ Moth Club
24th Oct - Manchester, UK @ YES
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