Album: Latin - Holy Fuck
From start to finish, Holy Fuck’s new album Latin is straight background noise. There are no vocals, choruses, or even catchy hooks. The best way to describe Latin is samples—beats and instruments cut and mixed together to make, well, noise.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Holy Fuck is known for its ability to turn techy genius into beautiful compositions. “Lovely Allen” from the band’s second album, LP, is a perfect example; it’s filled with angelic piano behind a steadily driving drumbeat.
Unfortunately, there are no tracks resembling “Lovely Allen” on this record. Many of the songs take way too long to kick in. In “Latin America,” the full melody isn’t introduced until two minutes into the track. Although it does allow for two more minutes of emotional bliss with the full melodic driving force of the song, two straight minutes of heavy percussion challenges even the longest attention span.
Most tracks on this album drone on, but “Red Lights” is groovy as hell. The pimp daddy two-step beat right from the start is beyond addictive. The song has a minute-long intro beat before the melody kicks in, but the rhythm keeps it going. The vocoder, a speech-altering synth system, masks the voices well enough that it adds a melodic mist over the entire track.
Holy Fuck put a lot of time into tweaking the knobs on their synthesizers and adding extra bass to their beats, but the album lasts too long for its own good. Latin is a percussive drive through sharp samples and tough beats. Hopefully the next album provides a little more scenery.