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A Magazine for Sheffield

Congrats

The instant momentum and musical drive catches on immediately. Frills and fills build into a frantic, Ladytron-esque pulsing rage against a Gameboy that drones and swells like a high tide at midnight. Short, snappy tablets of compressed beats bring savage new sounds that sit perfectly on the tongue as they fizz and flavour away in the frothy caverns of deliverance.

Highly effected production makes an instrument of the studio itself, the dials and tweaks adding a level of musicality that reaches further than the mastering level. Synthesisers fused with vocals which float through notes during ever-shifting escapist space age colours make this album feel a bit like Moby in places, but with a punky crispness to the direction.

A lot of care has been taken to make sure that, although this album continues a theme of sound, each track takes a unique twist. When making electronic music with computers, it's very easy to over-diversify, making a bunch of tracks which sound like they're from different albums. But it's just as easy to produce a formulaic record, making bare minimum adjustments to the sound. Congrats is just shy of both extremes and it works really well.

A dab hand at homemade sound engineering in a barn, Holy Fuck have been able to utilise technology at a much greater level for the first time. Perhaps biting the bullet to get that extra level of exposure, or a humble desire to grow, the move is a good one as this record has a great sharp edge with a smooth flow, just like a razor. Refined and to the point. Clean shaven.