Using only a scavenged MIDI keyboard and sounds plundered from a wide swath of archaic media (90’s sampler CDs, 80s VHS docs, 70s student films) musician Jonathan Orr creates startlingly accomplished slabs of thick, lo-fi electro that shimmer and pounce like nothing else on the Vancouver scene. As on his previous release (2023's 'Bulk Order') the spiritual template here is the early unreleased tapes of Scotland’s Boards of Canada, particularly the twin holy grails of 'A Few Old Tunes Vol 1 & II', but this time around things feel noticeably weirder and more destabilized, as if that template were cracking apart under the weight of older, less definable influences. The title of the album is taken from the Gospel According to Thomas: “Give not that which is holy to dogs, in case they throw it onto the dunghill.” Reading the text on the verge of sleep, Orr had mistakenly understood it as pertaining not to ‘holy things,' but instead to things which were specifically ‘holy to dogs.’ What would such things be? Orr pictured a shrine of objects not valued by the world; garbage, refuse, decay, the discarded. Things forgotten or only half-remembered, like the rusted bones of ancient cities or the clips of dead media entombed on his hard drive. 'Holy to Dogs' charts a weaving course through this narcoleptic vision, from the bright epiphany of ‘Petroglyph Park’ to the blackened repetition of ‘Roman Concrete’, the eerie momentum of ‘Split Foot,’ and the rhythmic hypnosis of ‘Far Speak’; each track building on the last in a series of audio snapshots of lost worlds, forgotten rituals, and discarded histories. An absolutely essential release from one of Vancouver’s brightest (and darkest) lights.
