OVER UNDER SIDEWAYS DOWN

Back at the Heineken/Hot Press Rock Awards in April, David Holmes faced the TV cameras and explained how he felt about picking up another dance award.

Sure, he was honoured, but he felt that the acclaim must be frustrating for other Irish club acts, hustling for notice. Homer was also wary about becoming a celebrity. All his instincts were telling him that most of the interesting dance artists kept out of the mainstream, having fun, cultivating their renegade status. Many of the acts who took the commercial road became disposable and uncool. The edited quote that was used on the TV version of the Awards had David explaining thus: “I think it’s a bit embarrassing... that there isn’t more people on my level... making electronic-based music. I think that’s a bit... sad.”

The soundbite was subsequently sampled by an Irish duo called Geiger, who performed live to a loop of Homer’s words, creating their own cacophony around the statement, suggesting that there was more out there than the average pundit knew about. Geiger attracted a bit of notoriety in the Belfast area. Some observers felt that they were dissing the award winner and gaining some easy publicity en route. The alternate line was to believe that Geiger were actually expressing solidarity with Holmes, blaming the media for making lazy generalisations.

The only way to settle the dispute was to meet up with Eamonn Creen and David Foley, from Belfast and Sligo respectively. Since discovering another band out there working under the Geiger moniker, they’ve decided to call themselves BASIC instead. Otherwise, they’re barreling ahead, working out of Belfast, creating sundry mischief. So what gives with the Homer quote? “We never meant to make ourselves known by bitching about someone else,” David says, “Even though it has been interpreted that way. We were reacting to something that we didn’t believe was true – it was a talking point.” “There was an incredible ambiguity in what he was saying,” Eamonn figures. “That was the most enticing thing about it. We weren’t attempting to strike a bullseye there.”

Meantime, the pair have been making more individual statements, songs that will shortly be released from a cache of 80 working tracks in the BASIC memory bank. There’s a variety of moods and techniques on display, from extra-large beats to slashes of ethnic frippery, recalling Transglobal Underground and the Afro-Celt Sound System. Live there’s some startling symbolism going on as Eamonn whips out a flute, the national instrument of Northern Ireland, generally associated with sectarian tradition. But in the BASIC scheme of things, the instrument’s tones are chopped and recycled, making for a glorious reconstitution. The mission to re-route the flute has been accomplished, even if many observers haven’t been sure how to deal with the in-concert experience. “People have a problem with it,” Eamonn says. “They don’t know if we’re live or miming. It’s gonna take time to break that. And that’s one thing that the Sounds Of The Irish Underground album will hopefully do. It shows that people are making this themselves. They’re not waiting for it to come over on promo.” Sounds Of The Irish Underground has been mentioned in the pages of Hot Press already. Suffice to say that it covers a dozen acts across the island. The north is well represented, with the likes of David Holmes’ ‘Gritty Shaker’, plus a track from his former DJ partner Iain McCready, aka Arthouse Projects. Other tracks with connections to this area include National Guard, who are led by Joby Fox, one-time author of Energy Orchard’s ‘Belfast’ And there’s The Vivid, centred around west Belfast’s Sean Quinn, whose roots go back through Dubh Chapter and One Deaf Ear to the early days of Irish electronic sounds.

BASIC are represented by a track called ‘Death Of A Cigarette’. They feel that the publicity generated by the album, flagged up by the cross-border launch parties, will bring about some interesting headclashes. “We’ve never met any of the other acts,” says Eamonn, “and that’s the good thing about the album. It was so underground, maybe only two of the artists have been signed before. It’s gonna be a good opportunity with these launches to meet up and even work with other people.” The pair also heartily approve of the current success of Agnelli And Nelson, whose anthemic ‘El Nino’ has just taken the sound of the Lush club (the Portrush answer to the Ibiza vibe) into the UK charts. That people should care to be excited by Sash (as opposed to The Sash) is a decent thing.

So it seems as if the Heineken/Hot Press Rock Awards 1999 will be a lot busier in the dance arena. That’s likely to please David Holmes, who is currently enjoying the Hollywood success of his soundtrack work on the ‘Out Of Sight Movie’. He’s subsequently turned down a load of similar offers, choosing to duck and dive some more. Although he did get a huge bang out of the Los Angeles premiere, when his girlfriend Lisa found herself overshadowed in the auditorium by the seated hulk of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But David’s already out of that scene, planning a move to New York to record his new album, hinting that he may not see so much of Belfast in the future. His plans involve collaborations with Jon Spencer and Joe Strummer, plus a remix of the new Manic Street Preachers record. You hear the excitement in his voice again, guessing that another amazing year is due. A credit to the nation. One of many.