Photo credit: Steve Gullick
David Holmes has announced details of his first solo album since 2008’s The Holy Pictures. Blind On A Galloping Horse is due for release on Heavenly Recordings on November 10.
A 14-track interrogation of the last decade, time spent watching a decaying, fraying Britain visibly buckling in real-time while tending to his own battles with mental health. Holmes’ soundtrack to this inquiry is at times claustrophobic, often euphoric, driven by the rattle and snap of analogue drum machines, wild oscillations of droning analogue synths and the voice of Raven Violet, which beguiles and commands in a way that could part oceans.
On this record, there are songs of hope for an age of uncertainty, love songs to leap the barricades to and, on “Necessary Genius”, a comprehensive roll call of the great and good – those ‘dreamers, misfits, radicals, outcasts’ that we’ve lost and just a few who’ve managed to cling on in the churn of the 21st century. And there are elegiac electronics evocative of an endless Europe where pulsating, crackling rhythm tracks fuse with dreamlike textures and the underground pulse of psychedelic therapy to form something unique that feels nothing less than radical.
Throughout Blind on A Galloping Horse, there are spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, alongside a Palestinian ambulance driver and French and Irish observers of the UK’s turmoil of recent years. Their voices add to the feeling that this record is a call to action, a motivation and a head-clearing, slate-wiping journey. As the opening “When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified” song goes, “I wanna sleep on the wind, I wanna live, I don’t wanna rust / I wanna breath, I wanna fly, not rot in the dirty dust”. Calls to action have rarely sounded so inviting.
Listen to “Necessary Genius” – BELOW:
Blind On A Galloping Horse was written, produced and arranged by David Holmes. The album features updated versions of the previously released singles “Hope Is The Last Thing To Die” and “It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love” and a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes’ late friend Andrew Weatherall “(I Laugh Myself To Sleep).” British graphic designer Jimmy Turrell designed all of the album’s artwork. The cover shot was taken post-riot in 70’s Belfast by local cult street photographer Bill Kirk.
David Holmes is a Belfast-born DJ & producer. In his varied professional life, he has produced five of his own albums and over 30 film soundtracks. Having DJed from the age of 15, David went on to run one of Belfast’s most revered club nights – Sugar Sweet – which brought acid house and rave culture to a city steeped in the Troubles. David has produced Noel Gallagher, Primal Scream and has remixed the likes of Orbital, Jarvis Cocker, and many more. He has also produced highly acclaimed soundtracks for Steven Soderbergh (on over ten films), Michael Winterbottom, Yann Démange and Steve McQueen which have won him multiple awards including one BAFTA and 2 Ivor Novello’s. Recently, with his band Unloved, he created and curated the music for the much-lauded BBC series Killing Eve. His round-about selection of cinematic, library music, rock ‘n’ roll, psych, experimental, unclassifiable and independent music under the banner of Gods Waiting Room continues to appear at venues around the world and on a regular slot at NTS radio shows.
Album artwork and tracklist:
1. When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified
2. It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love
3. Emotionally Clear
4. Hope Is The Last Thing To Die
5. You Will Know Me By The Smell Of Onions
6. Necessary Genius
7. Yeah Yeah Yeah
8. I Laugh Myself To Sleep
9. Too Muchroom
10. Agitprop
11. Stop Apologising
12. Tyranny Of The Talentless
13. Love In The Upside Down
14. Blind On A Galloping Horse
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