A few months ago, around the time that he remixed Jo Sims’ track, Bass: The Final Frontier, I was offered the chance to interview David Holmes. Something that I jumped at. In the process of preparing the questions, about midway through, I stopped and asked myself, “What the fuck have I done with my life?” This guy’s CV is absolutely incredible. He’s had such an amazing career. From organising art school raves, in a still troubled Belfast, to scoring countless films, features, documentaries, and award-winning TV dramas. Shit, David even soundtracked the London Olympics. He’s worked with Hollywood and indies, tons of tremendously talented people like Steven Soderberg, Steve McQueen, Yann Demange, and Alison Millar. He’s even had a shot at producing and directing himself. For someone who’s so often talked about their love of cinema, it must be a dream come true. The first time I saw David, in the early 1990s, he was propping up the bar at the infamous suburban Sunday shindig, Full Circle. Talk about coming far. 

The interview, sadly, fell through. I wasn’t surprised, seeing how crazy busy David is, but with his new album, Blind On A Galloping Horse, now out, I thought I’d post some of the prep as a list of my favourites from David’s many, many wonderful tunes…

PRODUCTIONS

David Holmes / Smoked Oak / 1995

On a 45 that came free with the magazine, Jockey Slut (recently relaunched as Disco Pogo), Smoked Oak was far from throwaway. Playing at 33, the track is a 7 minute-plus piece of wonky downtempo techno. Kinda Carl Craig goes Mo Wax. In a place where Sci-Fi strings, funky organ, and a broken hip hip beat meet, it may well be a tribute to the pioneering electronic library music sounds of people like Claude Vasori and Sam Spence. Gary Irwin was the engineer here, one of David’s long-standing Belfast friends who’s gone on to have great solo success under the alias, The Vendetta Suite.

David Holmes / Gone / 1996

For a long-time David worked with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner, and from the outside he seemed like a fourth member of The Sabres Of Paradise, taking it in turns with Andrew Weatherall to make music with pukka programming and playing pair. I guess Gone is a good example. A single, from David’s debut album, This Films Crap Lets Slash The Seats, it stars Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell – and a Shangri-Las sample (from George “Shadow” Morton’s I Can Never Go Home Anymore). Produced by The Sabres Of Paradise, and subsequently remixed by Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood’s Two Lone Swordsmen in a way it marked both the end, and the start of an era. 

David Holmes / Don’t Die Just Yet (Holiday Girl) / 1997

The original Don’t Die Just Yet was co-produced with DFA / Unkle’s Tim Goldsworthy. While that’s a cracking track, it’s actually the Arab Strap mix – Holiday Girl – that I prefer. I’m such a sucker for Aidan Moffat’s unrequited teenage Bukowski-esque reminiscing, and then those mad Jean-Claude Vannier strings explode. 

The E.P. also features a furious Mogwai mix, who were another Scottish band that I was massively into at the time. I’m pretty sure that I caught them both live at a London show, which also featured Campag Velocet, and maybe Spiritualised. The memory’s a little bit hazy.

David Holmes / Living Room / 2000

Living Room appeared on a promo for the album, Bow Down To The Exit Sign, flipped by the probably better known 69 Police. Grungy bass-driven funk, New York artist Carl Hancock Rux provided jazz-punkish poetry, and the end result – testifying like a cross between The Make Up and Hendrix – recalled Detroit’s deadly Dirtbombs. Around this time David was including stuff like Sarah Webster Fabio’s Sweet Songs, Rare Earth’s Get Ready and Rodriguez’s Sugar Man in his sets. Something new was certainly afoot. 

David Holmes / I Heard Wonders / 2008

This is a breakneck motorik missive. Like La Dusseldorf spun, not at 33, but 45. David sings, and does his best Bobby Gillespie / Jim Reid. It just blows my mind that this was part of the soundtrack to the 2012 London Olympics. From acid house evangelist to composer of government-sanctioned patriotic anthem. 

If you watch this video, Beckham as James Bond, and the unity it aims to promote and project, what the fuck happened to Britain in the last decade? 

Jane Weaver / Arrows & Stealing Gold / 2014

David produced two tracks on Jane Weaver’s 2014 album, The Silver Globe. Arrows is totally modern, but full of Shangri-Las / Shadow Morton `60s pop melodrama. Treated with heroic doses of reverb, Jane, like an apparition, weaves (sorry) in and out of focus, amid tremolo twang and vintage synth shimmer. Her love song now a musical potion to protect those near and dear, and most certainly otherworldly. 

The acoustic strum of Stealing Gold is submitted to only slightly less echo. Enchanted electronic touches framing Jane’s flawless, pitch perfect, vocal performance. It’s one to set the faeries dancing. 

Documenta / Love As A Ghost / 2015

In 2015 David teamed up with Belfast label, Touch Sensitive. The imprint had previously released his score to Yann Demange’s excellent `71, and he now produced a track for local trio, Documenta. While reviewing their album, Drone Pop #1, I referenced Bauhaus, Hawkwind, Bright Black Morning Light, The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa, Pink Floyd’s score for Barbet Schroeder’s More, The Smiths, Spiritualised, and The 13 Floor Elevators. As for David’s track, Love As A Ghost, I wrote:

“(The song) blows `60s girl group pop bubblegum as re-imagined by The Jesus & Mary Chain. An MBV see-sawing tremolo riff echoes Kevin Shield`s work for “Lost In Translation”, but sonically speaking it`s Richard Fearless` “Girls” from the same soundtrack, or Johnny Boy`s “You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes”, if it were covered by Tropic Of Cancer. Drums suck backwards, their vacuum pulling everything with it. Peaking Lights` if they were more Phil Spector than Lee “Scratch” Perry. Like a goodbye replayed from memory, a retracing of steps. Trying to pinpoint where you went wrong.”

This production fed into Unloved, the super successful studio project that David, together with creative partners Keefus Ciancia and Jade Vincent, debuted the same year.  

David Holmes / Elsewhere Anchises / 2016

Inspired partly by The KLF`s Chill Out, and partly by solitary walks, headphones on, David’s contribution to the Late Night Tales series seamlessly mixed music from disparate sources, both genres and time-frames, in the manner in which your mind might wander on said hike. Not necessarily linearly, but there is an overall theme. It’s very much a rumination on life, its passing, and what may lie beyond: Barry Woolnough chants for communion with his deceased spouse; The Children Of Sunshine convince themselves they`re gonna get to Heaven; Alain Maclean makes a hooligan`s confession at the Pearly Gates; David Crosby is captured still reeling from the death of Christine Hinton; Buddy Holly, taken too soon, has almost always been a ghost. Jeff Bridges opens his heart to the universe; B.P. Fallon celebrates the career of his friend, guitarist Henry McCullough (the piece was recorded in one take on the night of Henry`s funeral); Eat Lights Become Lights surrender to eternity; and Stephen Rea reads from Seamus Heaney`s final translation, the sixth book of Virgil`s “Aeneid”, describing Aeneas` journey through the underworld. 

The album feeds rock `n` roll through Joe Meek`s I Hear A New World, Folk, FM synthesis, kosmische and ambient, The narcotic whispers are linked together by exclusives produced by Holmes. There`s Song Sung’s shoegaze torch song cover of 10cc. and collaborations with Steve Jones – his pedal steel on their The Reiki Healer From County Down provides the set`s most KLF moment – Geese, Hugo Nicolson’s Spark Sparkle, Lullaby Movement, Documenta, Die Hexan and Jon Hopkins. Never melancholy, it is sometimes incredibly moving – particularly on the Rea recited Elsewhere Anchises. The overall mood is more a “Siddhartha”-like reflection, mediation. Not worrying but watching. Not counting the days, but wise enough to savour them.

*An early edit of this review was originally posted on Test Pressing.

David Holmes & Brian Irvine / Ordinary Love / 2019

David and composer / conductor Brian Irvine put together an understated chamber orchestra score for Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s Ordinary Love. The music perfectly accompanied a picture whose message is that no life, with love, is ordinary. The closing song, Isn’t It So, is basically Unloved, with Brian. Jade delivering the bruised, embattled, but unbeaten, lyric like a kindly, wise, but world-weary Billie Holiday. 

Song Sung / This Ascension Is Ours / 2020

On This Ascension Is Ours, David and Keefus cast twin sisters, Georgina and Una McGeough as bewitching sirens, set in sonic surroundings that are sort of One Dove doing American Spring. Shoegaze reimagined on analogue synths rather than guitars. 

Sinead O’Connor / Trouble Of The World / 2020

A single from Sinead and David, that raised funds for Black Lives Matter, and was intended to trailer an album, titled No Veteran Dies Alone. Sinead’s reading of the traditional song was heavy to start with, and following her sad passing, it’s only taken on more weight. It’s impossible not hear her own pain in it. 

Unloved / Thinkin About Her / 2022

This is my favourite of the songs that Unloved composed for the smash hit TV series, Killing Eve. A truly beautiful ballad that’s like Brian Eno producing The Beach Boys, the band’s 2020 cover of the Ray Davis-penned, Kinks rarity, Strange Effect, comes in a very close second. 

David Holmes / I Laugh Myself To Sleep / 2023 

One of the tracks on the new LP, Blind On A Galloping Horse, I Laugh Myself To Sleep was co-produced with Weatherall. The label kept this collaboration relatively quiet. I guess that they didn’t want to potentially overshadow the album’s considerable achievements. That said, it’s still one of the highlights.

REMIXES

Primal Scream / Uptown (Free Ass) / 2009

David’s remix of Primal Scream’s Uptown was unfortunately overshadowed at the time by Weatherall’s rework, since this signalled The Guv`nor’s return to producing Balearic beats. Something that made many ravers in their 40s, myself included, cry tears of joy. Both versions can be found on a promo CD, and a white label 12 that the band sold at their gigs. David’s mix ditches the orchestral strings for some prime punk funk, disco-not-disco. The groovy growling bass combined with clattering conga fills, and the synths a subtle nod to Simple Minds’ Themes For Great Cities. It doesn’t hurt this is one of the best songs that The Scream had / have written in years. 

The Liminanas / Calentita / 2020

In 2019 The Liminanas remixed Unloved’s Devils Angels. A year later, David and Keefus returned the favour, channelling Serge Gainsbourg, Brigette Fontaine, and Areski Belkacem, Requiem Pour Un Con, and Comme A La Radio (although the “Marijuana” refrain prevents it being played on my FM show). The terrific trap drums also position the piece at the funkier end of Stereolab’s stuff. It should be soundtracking some 1960s psychedelic exploitation flick. The two bands are clearly kindred spirits, and sonically linked. 

IWDG / In A Lonely Place / 2021

Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray paid tribute to Ian’s brother, Andrew, with a cover of New Order’s In A Lonely Place. Andrew’s close collaborators, Sean “Hardway Bros” Johnston, and former Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood, both remixed the track. David sings on his version*, and also adds a priceless snippet of Andrew professing his love for all things Anthony H. Wilson and Factory Records. 

*I think it’s him. There are no credits.

The Vendetta Suite / Purple Haze. Yellow Sunrise / 2022

In a reunion with Gary Irwin, David remixed Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise, one of the highlights from The Vendetta Suite album, The Kempe Stone Portal. Transforming the original’s homage to Second Summer Of Love house into a blurred, ethereal, but still banging, piece of post-punk dub. 

Orbital / Belfast / 2022

Released in 1990, Paul and Phil Hartnoll’s Belfast is a UK rave classic, its hook, a now famous operatic aria. To celebrate the tune, and the album it was taken from’s 30th anniversary, David turned it into 12-minute kosmische rock epic, losing the diva, while totally retaining the OG’s sense of innocence and optimism. Part of Orbital’s Thirty-Something box set, it could later be purchased as a 45 with Issue 97 of Electronic Sound magazine. 

Andy Bell / The Sky Without You (Radical Mycology) / 2022

David took the track, The Sky Without You, from Andy Bell’s album, Flicker, and delivered a dangerous dub mix that runs the whole thing backwards. Adding a bellowing bass line, and rattling details, while pulling Andy to pieces and sending him, spinning, out into the ether. Joining him are snippets of the same “Jingles” that Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson used in their de / re-construction of Primal Scream’s Come Together. The remix’s title, Radical Mycology is, perhaps, a reference to microdose therapy. The tiny tastes of fantastic fungi currently, experimentally used to break and reset cycles of behaviour caused by trauma and abuse. 

Jo Sims / Bass The Final Frontier / 2023

David drops the BPMs on Jo Sims’ buoyant Balearic electro to serve up some stately-paced, celebratory slo-mo acid house. Its melody a call back to The Sabres Of Paradise’s Smokebelch. 

If you’re wondering why none of David’s early prog-house and techno releases have made my list, well, the truth is that I don’t have them any more. Johnny Favourite, Disco Evangelists` De Niro, Four Boy One Girl Action, all went to London second-hand store Reckless. I sold them, job lot, with 100s of other 12s bought betweeen 1991 and 1994 in an attempt to make a break with the past, perhaps pretend it never happened, and start on getting sober. 

David Holmes & Raven Violet’s Blind On A Galloping Horse is out now on Heavenly Recordings.