Holy Fuck is what it is. It does what it does. And what it does is study a beat from all angles, add to the beat, build on top of the beat, to see what it’ll support. A band such as King Cobb Steelie did it, as did the stylists of Krautrock. To a point, this kind of experiment is necessarily clinical—studied is more fair, perhaps—and repetitive. Sometimes Holy Fuck lacks enough melody and variation in production to keep from exhausting subjects, listeners. Latin flourishes come and go, in a flash: the brassy, bright trumpet on “Stay Lit” and the percussion intro to “SHT MTN.” Or maybe that’s just what the listener wants to hear.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2010.