Let's Get Killed

It’s 1997 and David Holmes is taking New York as his muse, haring around downtown with some pals and a dictaphone; recasting the place as a Babel of street noise, strip joints and raving side-walk preachers. The resultant musical brew draws on Detroit techno, Krautrock, Northern Soul, Nuggets, Sun-Ra and Alice Coltrane, and while it sounds like a marginal vernacular, once Soderbergh cottons on, then Clooney, then Pitt, it sounds alluringly familiar. Let’s Get Killed is a party album. But a party album with soul and smarts to spare. Listen to its mighty front-pair of singles, ‘Gritty Shaker’ and ‘My Mate Paul’, and you’ll maybe also recognise the jittery, light-fingered flutter of the new, emergent Belfast making its presence felt.

No 43 in 2009, as voted for by over 200 Irish musicians.