THOSE HOLY: Cold Celtic Electronics Release Show

Electronic duo Those Holy perform a headline Liverpool show in support of their upcoming debut EP, Cold Celtic Electronics. Support from Crimewave & KARMAN.  MORE INFO

Cold Celtic Electronics, and they mean it: coldwave, gothic pop and industrial noise pared down to something stark and minimal, built for the club’s dimmest hour, hypnotic and repetitive, the vocals held at a distance while the rhythm pulls you under. Sparse and a little inhuman by design, closer to a ritual than a set.Producer Chrissy Connor grew up in Newry "with a feeling of otherness," drawn young to weird, heavy, gothic music; Grey came up in a small North Wales village, just as out of step with what surrounded her. Both carry their heritage with them here, just not the version that gets sold back on postcards. Where "Celtic" usually conjures something misty and sentimental, Those Holy pull it somewhere colder, sparser and club-shaped. "We want to subvert that for sure," says Connor. "But those sentimental sounds and images are important; we don't want to take away from them, but add to them”The result keeps that thread buried, in the texture rather than the melody. Beneath a rhythm that holds in 4, the textures, Connor says, "make me think of some sort of gnarly uilleann pipes or ancient horns," the Celtic element "understated, lurking. You might miss it, and I like that." Grey carries it in the language too, singing at times in Welsh, "a beautiful language in its own right," she says, "full of texture and rhythm," with words "that don't quite translate into English."