David Holmes and The Free Association

The Free Association are in the house and the Mothership has truly landed in Galway tonight! The Free Association is David Holmes’ new touring band project, a vehicle to transfer his brand of high-octane Southern-Fried boogie-funk to a live setting. Tonight’s gig is the third of eight monthly events forming the Heineken Green Room Sessions. The six-piece outfit are undeniably exciting, with Holmes’ trademark infectious breakneck apocalyptic voodoo grooves, fleshed out with pulsating bass, pounding drums, stabbed jagged shards of guitar and equal-parts-scary-and-beautiful vocals from rapper Sean Reveron and chanteuse Petra Jean Phillipson.

The opening track is truly scary and portentous, all doom-laden vibes and jarring effects, with the dreadlocked and bearded Reveron coming on like a crazed, futuristic gris-gris soothsaying preacherman, if not a young George Clinton. With search lights and sirens we could be in Baghdad. The weird rollercoaster continues with ‘Don’t Rhyme No Mo’, Reveron revelling in his role as deranged ringmaster, with Phillipson coming in and out, sharing vocals and harmonising.

We get a chance to hear her do her thing on ‘I Wish I Had a Wooden Heart’, a beautiful, aching song with a throbbing bass pulse. Somewhere between Billie Holiday and Beth Gibbons, her dusky swooning croon enchants, as Holmes hunches over his decks in the background, creating a rich, edgy backdrop, with a bit of help from guitarist Steve Hilton. The crowd stare transfixed, the manic energy of the opening tunes now morphed into a more subdued, sedate dynamic, like some bizarre science-fiction cabaret.

The combination of Reveron and Phillipson works so well, with them complementing each other in almost every possible way. Hopping around like maniacal marionettes in an eerie techno-funk puppet show, they whoop and holler and deliver The Funk to an eager audience. Let’s not forget the puppetmaster however, as he hunches and lays down the layers of sound, creating his visceral funk. An übercool beacon of calm amidst the madness going on around him, while ironically he is the cause of much of it.

More moments of beauty (‘Pushin’ A Broom’) and madness (‘Everybody Knows’) ensue, before it’s all over and the manic Free Association psycho-funk sci-fi roadshow is gone.