Star Of David

I ve met some mad for it DJ-types in my time, but none that pops pills with quite the same enthusiasm as David Holmes. Advil, Nurofen, Solpadeine he s been necking them all in an attempt to shrug off the flu. Not that he wouldn t like an excuse to spend the next couple of days in his own bed. With the release of his Bow Down To The Exit Sign opus only a fortnight away, Holmer has been through Belfast Airport so many times that the sniffer dogs there know him to woof to. The promo campaign s hardly got going yet and he s already been to Munich, Hamburg, Barcelona, Paris, London (five times) and New Orleans.

There s a sense when you finish an album of, y know, having to fulfil your side of the bargain, he sniffles, sounding like that bloke from the Vick s Sinex advert. The travelling and having to breathe other people s recycled air have been as crap as ever, but the interviews themselves have been really interesting. It s a lot better than Let s Get Killed, where all journalists wanted to talk about were my experiences in New York. People have been looking at the albums as a sort of trilogy, and picking up on the cinematic angle that they all have.
There is indeed a feeling that as well as being the purveyor of some stonking dance tunes, David Holmes has it in him to join John Barry and Ennio Morricone as one of the film-scoring greats. We ll return to that later, but first, why s he got all that #1 Shop junk on his mantelpiece?
That s the voodoo altar I brought back with me from New Orleans, he explains. I bought it for $200 and got it blessed by the great Ava Kay Jones, who s the High Priestess there. I know it s bits of old toys and a broken mirror, but the way it s put together is absolutely brilliant. Something I didn t realise, until I saw the rosary beads in it, is how closely connected voodoo is to Catholicism. A lot of the principles and core beliefs are the same.
Actually, I witnessed the most incredible thing when I was with Ava Kay Jones. A woman, who d had some really, really bad experience, came to her claiming to be possessed, and she cast out the evil demons. There was all this screaming and yelling as she did it, but afterwards the woman was as calm as could be. I had a conversation with her, and y know, it was like talking to your mum.
Toenail clippings may be a bit of a problem, but I m sure I could get hold of a few strands of Peter Murphy s hair if he gives Bow Down a bad review on page 60.
I ve got my Beginners Guide To Voodoo here, so no fucking me about! Don t tell your reviewer (I won t. S.C.), but it s more the imagery and mystique I m into. That said, there s a section here entitled How To Harm An Enemy . To harm an enemy, write their name on a slip of paper and place it in the mouth of a snake. Hang the snake out in the sun to dry. As the snake suffers so does your enemy. If the snake dies, your enemy will meet the same fate . I ll have to import my own snakes, on account of St. Patrick, but it s doable.
While learning how to stick pins into miniature journalists was obviously a highlight, there were other things about The Big Easy which Holmer enjoyed.
I hooked up with these people who took me to see Fats Domino s house, and the graveyard where they shot Easy Rider. Then there were the fucking record shops! Before I went over, Bobby Gillespie said to me, Don t take your credit cards , and now I know what he meant. I bought this album by The Ju-Jus, Alchemy Of The Blues, for $200 which was actually a good price. I tried to get one of the songs cleared for a compilation, and discovered that for some bizarre reason the rights are owned by the US Government. The only time I ve spent more than that is when I coughed up #250 for a French sound library album, which had five of the most amazing drum breaks on it.
My Holy Grail at the moment, which I ll gladly pay any hotpress reader a hundred and fifty quid for, is a 45 by Tweetle Page called Black Man Too Tuff To Die.
Talking of Bobby G, the Primal Screamer lines up alongside Jon Spencer, Carl Hancock Rux and Tricky s ex, Martina Toppley-Bird, as one of Bow Down To The Exit Sign s guest yellers. Yelling being the operative word as he does a very passable impersonation of Sly Stone fronting The Stooges.
Yeah, and you could have Iggy & The Family Stone, he laughs. People keep saying, That Bobby Gillespie must be a mad fucker to work with , but actually, I can t think of anyone who s given me less trouble in the studio. He s let s make this magical , rather than where s my cheque?
Top blokes that they undoubtedly are, Primal Scream pissed a lot of Homelands-goers off when Mani shouted Tiochfaidh ar la from the stage. As the DJ who was on after them, does Holmes think that went against the peace and love vibe of the day?
Is that what he said? God, I never realised. Knowing Mani as I do, I imagine he was just trying to provoke a reaction. Y know, I d be surprised if he meant anything by it. He s never come across as bigoted, or expressed any of those sort of feelings in his conversations with me. I d say he was just having a laugh and taking the piss, cause he s a really gentle guy.
While we re on a Scream Team psychoanalysis roll, what s Kevin Shields like?
Again, without wanting to sound all showbizzy, he s one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet. Quiet in a friendly sort of way, and really, really into his music.
Having toured with the Primals, and seen the genuine gang thing that they ve got going on, has he ever said to himself, Fuck this DJ lark, I want to be in a rock n roll band!
Nah, I m too much of a studio man. What we are planning, though, is six live shows with everybody on the album doing their bit. I ll be in the middle of the madness with my decks and my keyboards, triggering off samples and dropping in bits of dialogue. There ll be one in Dublin, one in Belfast, two in London and then we ll finish off in Manchester and Glasgow. We re reckoning on having at least 14 people up there by the end of the night. The costing s are being done at the moment, so, accountants permitting, we ll be doing that this year.
I don t know if you ve ever seen the Rolling Stones concert film, Cocksucker Blues, but there s a scene at the end when Stevie Wonder s up there doing his thing, and the whole place is just rocking out. That s the vibe I want. I d even like to go as far as getting Ava Kay Jones over to do some snake dancing. I have this mental picture of playing Bad Thing with one light on her, and one light on Jon Spencer.
Ah yes, the track on Bow Down which sounds like the inside of Charlie Manson s head. A none too gentle riposte to Dr. John s Walking On Gilded Splinters , it s Reason No. 247 why Fragma fans will run a mile from the record. Save for 69 Police an insanely catchy tune that you won t be able to escape this summer there s nothing which makes you want to rush out and book a dodgy Club 18-30 holiday in Ibiza.
It s not a case of my music being better than their music we just have different agendas. I d rather cut my ear off than spend May to September in Spain, whereas other DJs treat it as a paid holiday and can t wait to get there.
I honestly don t care if Bow Down To The Exit Sign crosses over and becomes a big hit, he insists. I wouldn t like the expectations hanging over my head that come from selling two million records. Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers are deemed to have failed if they don t go platinum, which means that any sense of artistic worth has been lost. I d rather sell my 250,000 albums worldwide and not have to deliver hit singles. By the same token, if 69 Police gets to number one, I ll happily send Top Of The Pops the video.
Is he seriously telling us that he doesn t want to get up at seven o clock on Saturday and engage in some madcap antics with Ant n Dec?
I ve no interest whatsoever in being a pop star. The great thing about the album being finished apart from me being really proud of it is that I m free to work on other people s projects again. I m doing quite a bit of stuff for Martina s solo album, and the Manics have a couple of tracks that I ll probably co-produce, as opposed to remixing. My other project at the moment is a band called Joy Zipper who are a bit Beatle-ish, and a bit Velvet-sy.
Sadly, there isn t room in Holmer s busy schedule to link up with that founding father of techno, Gilbert O Sullivan.
I ve no idea how or why it came about, but yeah, I was asked if I d be interested in going to the Isle of Man and collaborating with Gilbert. They were thanked profusely for the offer and told no .
The person he would like to spend some quality studio time with is Siniad O Connor.
I ve not heard her new album, so maybe she s done this already, but I d love to take her off in a more experimental direction. Y know, really fucked up and twisted, but still pop. She s the only singer I know who can sound angelic and filthy at the same time. There s a versatility there that you could do amazing things with.
The venue for today s tete a tete is Holmes two up/two down in South Belfast, a gaff that he laughingly refers to as pure Steptoe & Son. His girlfriend, Lisa, has only just moved in, so it s still very much a bachelor pad with stacks of records jammed into every nook and cranny. Connoisseur of celebrity bathrooms that I am, I m thrilled to find a Sid Vicious Action Man where the rubber duck should be, and his gold disc for Therapy s Infernal Love perched atop the toilet. Despite picking up more and more soundtrack work in America, he has no intention of heading for the Hollywood Hills, or even making the short hop to London where trans-Atlantic flights would be far easier to catch.
My concern about Hollywood is that it d be so easy to go there and disappear up your own arse. It s full of these incredibly nice people, who stop being nice when they discover that you don t work for a studio.
The plus side is the amazing situations you find yourself in. For instance, my first time meeting Danny Devito was on a private jet with Rita Pearlman. We sat there drinking whiskey and watching South Park, same as you would do with your mates.
Fair enough, but does Danny know his hard houses from his handbags?
No, but he s very, very open-minded about music and interested in what you have to say. His company s produced films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Out Of Sight, so he knows the value of soundtracks.
Talking of which, how much dosh do you get for scoring an A-List movie?
If you re John Williams or Ennio Morricone you re probably on $900,000 a film, but at my level it varies enormously. It s like DJ-ing or doing a remix if you re into something, you ll do it for a lot less money. I want to do quality movies, in the same way that I want to work with quality artists. There are at least 15 scripts I ve turned down recently, either because I ve been too busy or they re not me.
One film that he can t wait to exercise his fader-finger on is Stephen Soderbergh s Ocean s Eleven. A remake of the 1960 Rat Pack vehicle, it stars Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bill Murray and Julia Roberts as five ex-members of the armed services who reunite to rob a casino. With them involved, it has to be an earner.
I m not doing that until 2001, but yeah, it s a huge production and potentially very bankable. Which is a polite way of saying, Fuck off, I m not going to tell you how much! .
Spoilsport. While it d be stretching a point to call them kindred spirits, David Holmes and Moby are similar in their desire to take classic influences and place them in a contemporary setting. As hideously over-familiar as it s become, Play definitely deserves gushing praise for the way it s infiltrated the mainstream.
I really don t see what all the fuss is about, Holmer says a tad sheepishly. The folk and blues samples are great, but I m not really into where he s taken them. You re right about one thing, and that s I d much rather hear Moby on the radio than a fucking boy band. I look at Westlife and all I feel is offended. Soulless drivel that sells five million copies is still soulless drivel. If they were the new Jackson Five I d be the first to applaud but they re not.
When it comes to dance, the North has always been a happier, vibier place to strut one s stuff. How much is that to do with Ulster s well-known penchant for E?
It s only when I started travelling abroad that I realised there s an intensity to gigs in Belfast which you don t get in other places. Whether or not that s a reaction to the troubles, I don t know cause I m too close to it.
The first thing that brought people together in this city was punk. Instead of where are you from? , the question was Rudi or Stiff Little Fingers? It was the same when mod came along Fuck religion, let s talk about music and Vespas . It may have happened on a bigger scale, and there may have been a drug called Ecstasy involved, but Acid House was just a continuation of that.
Having three moments in time like that, fucking hell, I ve been blessed!
The blessing continues with Holmes this week receiving the ultimate thumbs up. A phone call from Iggy Pop saying that Bow Down s great and can he please, please, please work with him?
No, Album of the Month in Marie-Claire. I ve arrived, haven t I?
David Holmes gives his Bow Down To The Exit Sign album the official launch treatment on June 8th when he DJs at The Kitchen.

Singing Their Praises
DAVID HOLMES on Bow Down s featured vocalists

Carl Hancock Rux: Nobody s ever heard of him before, but God, what a fucking voice! I wanted one of the tracks to have a Lost Poets vibe, so I clicked on to gopoet.com and there, along with the Gil Scott-Herons and Saul Williams , was Carl. Up till then I d been looking for a 19-year-old kid from The Bronx or Brooklyn who was really angry and militant, but he blew my mind. He s better than anything I could have hoped for.

Bobby Gillespie: One of the few bands that I totally, 100% respect are Primal Scream. They ve been around for 15 years done the punk, gospel, psychedelic, electronic and rock n roll things and still they want more. Bobby s the one you notice cause he s singing, but there are Scream Teamers all over the album.

Martina Toppley-Bird: You know I said that Siniad O Connor s the only singer who can sound angelic and filthy at the same time? Well, Martina s another. It still hasn t sunk in that I ve got her on the record.

Jon Spencer: I did a remix of Talk About The Blues for Jon, and instead of taking a fee asked if he d guest on my album. I wasn t really sure what I was going to do with his voice until I heard Gumbo, and then I thought, yeah, I ll get him on a Dr. John tip. I gave him the line bad thing going on , and well, he took it literally! I ve never seen anyone bare their soul like that. When he came out the booth, he was soaked in sweat.