Holy Fuck @ Oran Mor, 11 May

Holy Fuck @ Oran Mor, Glasgow, 11/5/08 (****)
live review for the skinny

With a drummer and a bassist, Holy Fuck are half an indie-rock band - but the other two members create such a spectral swirling racket with knobs, buttons and a vintage 35mm film synchronizer (as bloody usual) that it's impossible to reduce them to anything so straightforward. From the back of Òran Mór's hall, it's not hard to pick faults -- when you want them to go all-out Ulrich Schnauss and Can crossover, they lapse into a louche funk breakdown that loses the momentum -- but from near the stage, the gig experience is transformed. Lesson learned: proximity to the stage at a Holy Fuck gig is crucially important. At the front it's impossible not to become immersed in the maelstrom, transfixed by the lights and strange instruments, exhilarated by the visceral thrill of the coruscating textures of noise. Hence the liturgical profanities emanating from all around.