Holy Fuck talk All Points East, their new album and festival fails

The Canadian ravers will be coming to Victoria Park next year with new album 'Deleter' and some "old bangers". We spoke to the band's Graham Walsh about playing with Tame Impala and recording with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor

The first date of All Points East 2020 has been announced and we are extremely excited. Alongside headliners Tame Impala, Caribou, Glass Animals and Whitney, Holy Fuck will be bringing their electronic party tunes to London’s Victoria Park on May 23. (Buy your tickets here if you haven’t already, like).

So, unable to contain our glee anymore, we got on the phone to Graham Walsh – who plays keys with the Toronto scene mainstays – to talk about their new album ‘Deleter’ (out January 17) and the record’s involvement with Hot Chip, Jack White and Four Tet as well as what’s in store for next summer. Fuck yeah.

Hello Graham! What was Kieran Hebden of Four Tet’s role in the making of your epic new single ‘Luxe’?

Graham Walsh: “He was an encouraging opinion! Brian [Borcherdt] and him had a hang-out in upstate New York, a date you could call it. They went to the farmer’s market and Brian shared with him a folder of rough demos and that was one in particular he offered his opinions on. He was really encouraging.”

He offered some words of wisdom…

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“Which from Kieran Hebden mean a lot!” When he points you in a direction, you’re probably wise to go in it.”

How did Alexis from Hot Chip get involved in the track?

“The title track from his solo album ‘Beautiful Thing’ came up on Spotify and I heard his voice and everything just clicked! I played our song on top of it at the same time and that worked really well.”

We hear he recorded his vocals at Third Man in Nashville?

“The idea was to make it sound like it was a found sample off an old dusty folk record. He had the idea to record on a Voice-O-Graph, but there are only a few in the world. The only functioning one we knew about was at Third Man… On New Year’s Eve he was going for a trip to Nashville, so we pulled it off at the 11th hour.”

Did you need Jack White’s blessing?!

“Ha, yes! He had to take his guitar out and knight us on our shoulders with the headstock… No, I don’t think so. Anybody can go in there and use it!”

Will it be all back to Alexis’s for an after party after All Points East?

“Ohh! It is presumptuous of me to commit to that in NME and he’ll just have to deal with it?! I hope he can come out and sing with us though.”

What’s your plan for Tame Impala’s set?

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“I saw them here in Toronto and it was really awesome, but my seats were pretty far back. So if there’s any possibility of watching them from the side of the stage I wanna do it. I wanna see what they’re doing up there!”

Who else playing on May 23 are you excited by?

“Caribou, for sure. He’s a fellow Canadian and if we run into each other we’ll say hey. I sometimes jam with his drummer, which is pretty fun. The bass player in Caribou used to play in a band with our drummer… There is a bit of a family connection there.”

I know it’s a way off, but what’s the plan for Holy Fuck’s set?

“We’re breaking out our new songs live and that’s taking them to a whole new dimension, but then there’s a bunch of our old bangers will be playing as well.”

Who’s the best festival headliner you’ve ever seen?

“We saw Massive Attack play years ago and they were really awesome. And we played a touring festival in Australia and Portishead were headlining and that was incredible and really amazing. On a more depressing note, we played Coachella once and we’d come over from Spain and were destroyed by jetlag and Kraftwerk and Prince were playing and we could not muster the energy to see any of them. It was a life fail moment.”

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