DAVID HOLMES レコード& CD

Review: A popular and controversial new TV series, This England, documents the recent history of England's most contemptible prime minister, Boris Johnson, and his Conservative government's reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the surreality of so quickly dramatizing a very real and bad collective experience (there are theories out there that say turning real traumatic world events into TV spectacles has the useful effect of placating a public that would otherwise grow revolutionarily angry), we still commend the OST by David Holmes here, which matches the urgency and quick-action of the pandemic as it spread across the country. Holmes' orchestral score aims for three disparate themes ('creeping', 'urgency', and 'careful'), which cause the music to rise in tactful intensity, contrasting to not-so-tactful 'traffic light' system to which the public was subject - but which the government somehow weren't.

Review: David Holmes' first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures, Blind On A Galloping Horse now comes to Heavenly Recordings. A politically-charged LP full of sonic interrogations of political disaster and turmoil, Holmes here joins the cast of artists using their art to provide solace to music fans suffering at the hands of the Uncertainocene. With updated versions of the previously released singles 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' and 'It's Over If We Run Out Of Love', as well as a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes' late friend Andrew Weatherall, we're reminded of conflict, migration and othering, as all manner of voices combine to form a diverse but unified whole against a backdrop of leftfield post-punk - be they the spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, or the French and Irish observers of the UK's turmoil of recent years.

Review: Treading an eclectic path through a twenty year career that's taken in everything from Detroit techno to vintage French ye-ye, from breakbeat-driven floor-fillers to krautrock epiphanies, David Holmes has made his name predominantly as an exemplary crate-digger and aesthete, whether soundtracking Steven Soderbergh movies or dishing our albums of his own. Thus, it comes as no surprise that this compilation - marking something of a personal journey for Holmes - is reflective of his status as an exemplary man of taste. Whether dispensing classics by the likes of David Crosby or Buddy Holly, unreleased original solo material or killer obscurities from everyone from modular synthesis cultist Keith Fullerton Whitman to Hollywood legend Jeff Bridges, this stylish nocturnal travelogue puts the listener resolutely in safe hands.