The Light Brigade is a new project from David Holmes. The alias first appeared on last year’s awesome Andrew Weatherall-related Sounds From The Flightpath Estate compilation, and the Weatherall connection continues here, on this 2-track 12 for Mystic Arts. Shuffle The Deck is a collaboration with Keith Tenniswood, the surviving member of Two Lone Swordsmen. It starts with a sermon taken, I think, from a much loved, much sampled Aretha Franklin gospel LP, but it’s so incendiary that it could easily double for The MC5 testifying. Racing along on a mad throbbing bass-line and a tight, tumbling drum loop, while disembodied voices and Arthur Russell-esque cello fly in and out, this is made all the more essential by including a fairly famous clip of Weatherall himself. Where the beloved Balearic Beat / acid house icon discusses our basic, primal need for transcendence and puts forward the case for rave being a gnostic ceremony. 

On the flip you’ll find Only Love Can Save Us, which is certainly not filler, but rather another of Holmes’ emotional, spirit-lifting homages to `70s kosmische, and in particular La Dusseldorf. Working with Michael Andrews, who previously contributed to the acclaimed and bravely, fiercely political album, Blind On A Galloping Horse, the two of them build from a flickering, metallic tattoo, through pretty chimes, to a climax of euphoric eruptions.  

The Light Brigade’s Shuffle The Deck can be ordered directly from Mystic Arts.