BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.3//EN TZID:Europe/London X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London BEGIN:VEVENT UID:2711@scala.co.uk DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260924T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260924T230000 DTSTAMP:20260417T155829Z URL:https://scala.co.uk/events/holy-fuck/ SUMMARY:HOLY FUCK at Scala - Thursday 24th September 2026 - 7:00 pm until 1 1:00 pm DESCRIPTION:At a time when even entire classic rock bands are being AI gene rated\, Holy Fuck are now more relevant than ever. The Canadian quartet ha ve forged their reputation for making electronic music with a human touch. While many artists create that core electronic sound via laptops\, loops and drum machines\, Holy Fuck keep every element as live as possible. The intoxication they inspire comes not from cold\, staid perfection\, but fro m the ragged energy that comes from four musicians relishing sharing a mom ent. Factor in the chaos born from improvisation and skipping a click trac k in favour of loose\, raw\, real percussion\, and it’s easy to see why Holy Fuck are renowned for their pulsating\, unorthodox thrills.\n\nAs the passage of time marches to its own relentless beat\, it’s almost fright ening to note that it has been six years since their previous set\, 2020 ’s Deleter. Given the well-documented events that followed that year\, t he normally road-weary band — Brian Borcherdt\, Graham Walsh\, Matt ‘P unchy’ McQuaid and Matt Schulz — spent two years entirely apart from e ach other.\n\nIn March 2022\, they finally reconvened in an old village ha ll in rural Nova Scotia. The main purpose was simply to reunite and rehear se\, but new song ideas soon flowed out of them. That became the starting point for their upcoming album Event Beat.\n\n“The catalyst for this rec ord and the beginning of the recordings that we did was us just getting ba ck together again\,” states Graham. “It was something unique to us. It was all of us living together in one space with no distractions\, just wo rking on music in the middle of nowhere. It’s a way I really like to wor k. For at least half of the songs on the record\, it was just us holed up together\, which was great!”\n\nIntuition\, muscle memory\, an almost te lepathic link — call it what you will\, but the shared synapses between the quartet were soon firing again. “Having our own language that we can speak so easily together is really important to us\,” asserts Brian. “We all have our own piece to bring to the conversation\, and it’s idi osyncratic to us because we’ve been dedicated to it for so long. Hopeful ly that’s encouraging to other bands who feel like they’re on a simila r path.”\n\nNonetheless\, there were challenges. At one point a storm kn ocked out the power\, forcing them to start up a generator. More important ly was the presence of a local who objected to the volume of their session s. You can talk long into the night about musical influences\, but nothing shapes the direction of a record quite like the practical obstacle of hav ing to placate a neighbour.\n\n“That became a production challenge\,” notes Graham. “We still wanted to jam\, but while being as quiet as poss ible. Matt couldn’t hit the drums really loud\, so we made these more lo w-key ambient things. It was like\, how quiet can we be and still do what we do?”\n\nBrian concurs. “We were making these quite pastoral\, vibey soundscapes\, and I thought we were going to have an ambient record on ou r hands. I thought this was going to be almost like new age music or somet hing.”\n\nHitting play on Event Beat reveals that Holy Fuck totally circ umvented that idea\, as opening track ‘Evie’ swirls between pulsating bass\, punk-funk grooves and luminous synth flourishes to offer a hypnotic calling card for the rest of the album. It was an idea that dated back to 2016’s Congrats and was salvaged after Brian spent six years listening to its initial form on headphones until they could unlock what made it wor k. It also provides what he calls an “infinity loop” or a “streaming hack” for fans who play the album on repeat\, as the end of the final s ong\, the title track\, loops straight into the ‘Evie’ intro.\n\nAt th e other extreme\, ‘Gold Flakes’ is a typical “Holy Fuck studio jam ” driven by Matt McQuaid’s rolling bass. Its dreamy Krautrock march is given additional flair with a flurry of musique concrète-style sound col lage elements that unveil more details with each repeated listen. Instigat ing movement more than provoking the mind is the swaggering ‘Czar’\, f ull of popping J Dilla–ish bass\, happy accidents and random chaos that is already proving a challenge as they plan future live shows. As Brian si ghs\, “I’ll have to get really tight with my imperfections.”\n\n‘E levate’ leans most heavily into those new age preconceptions\, but with Holy Fuck being Holy Fuck it soon detours into the unexpected\, layering f resh sonic elements at every turn. “I really like those epic techno song s like Orbital and Underworld\,” smiles Graham. “This was my attempt a t something like that — just dancefloor euphoria.”\n\nThroughout the r ecord\, the vocals drift through the ether like a conversation with an ima ginary friend. There’s no overarching concept\, but Brian highlights a r ecurring motif of momentum “towards something that is beyond personal co ntrol\, either at the mercy of some bigger system or some unspoken will. ” While Deleter leaned on guest vocals more than ever\, this time they ’re conspicuous only by their absence. There was no grand strategy — j ust the realisation that the record excelled without them. Brian did\, how ever\, call on two members of his spacious semi-classical ambient project Quilting: Mairi Chaimbeul\, who contributed harp to the title track ‘Eve nt Beat’\, and Sahara Jane Nasr\, who plays the South Asian violin-like instrument\, the sārangī.\n\nThe album also emerged in the wake of an un expected Holy Fuck rediscovery after ‘Tom Tom’ featured in a key scene in Amazon Prime Video hit animated series Invincible. It’s now their mo st streamed track\, with twelve times the number of plays of its nearest c ompetitor. Brian and Graham recall a discussion with their then-label\, wh o were somewhere between curious and indifferent about their choice of ‘ Tom Tom’ as a lead single for Congrats. “There’s something validatin g when something happens years later for such a random reason that you wou ldn’t have predicted\,” Brian reflects.\n\nThe unpredictable struck ag ain when ‘Lost Cool’ resurfaced in the Academy Award–winning body ho rror The Substance. Graham took the opportunity to see it on the big scree n. “I was in the big theatre watching it\, remembering back to listening to the demo I made of just the drum beat and synth bassline in my car\, c ranked up while driving through Toronto — just thinking\, this is fun. I t’s kind of cool to put it all into perspective and have that cycle happ en.”\n\nBetween those spotlight moments and the vibrancy of Event Beat\, it’s clear that Holy Fuck are as relevant as ever. It can’t be attrib uted to any single factor. Perhaps it’s their conviction to keep going a nd stick to their guns regardless of music’s latest trends. Maybe it’s the pure compulsion to continue even after many early peers have drifted away. Or it could be their example to younger musicians that playing live\ , off the floor\, can still be a creative thrill — as demonstrated by th eir incoming At Work video performance series.\n\n“What I hope people ta ke away from it is an appreciation of the togetherness and humanity in the music\,” concludes Graham. “Music should be played and enjoyed togeth er. When that raw punk sound comes off the stage\, you should just enjoy i t and relish that experience. It’s wonderful and awesome.” ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://scala.co.uk/s/wp-content/uploads/2026/01 /Lead-Shot-1-scaled-e1768405730211.jpg CATEGORIES:Live Music END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260329T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR