'Belfast layabout' makes music take him a long way

By MIKE HOULAHAN

For a self-professed Belfast layabout, musician and DJ David Holmes has come a long way.

Holmes - who will perform at the Big Day out in Auckland on January 16 - misspent his youth in the nightclubs and bars of the Northern Irish city.

These days he misspends his time in bars and clubs around the world, as one of dance cultures most in-demand DJs.

However, there are more strings to Holmes' bow than playing a few records.

He has also produced several albums under his own name, and has just released the critically-acclaimed debut album of his new musical vehicle The Free Association.

Add to that an extensive CV as a producer and also as an arranger of film scores - with movies such as Resurrection Game, Out Of Sight and Oceans Eleven to his credit - and it is plain Holmes is a man of many talents.

"I grew up in Belfast, and I grew up at a time when there weren't any options - the only option I had was my love of music and going to clubs," he recalls.

"One day I woke up and I had a career. The next day I woke up and I was doing film scores.

"I'm very grateful and very thankful for the experiences I've had, and that I get paid for doing something I love."

Of course, there was a little more to Holmes' career than simply waking up and finding success in his lap.

He started DJ'ing as a 15-year-old, and soon branched out into concert promotion and fanzine writing.

As acid house swept through Britain's club scene in the late 80s Holmes organised some of Northern Ireland's first parties, meeting and making friends with two highly important and influential DJs - Andrew Weatherall and Ashley Beedle, under whose guidance Holmes first ventured into making music in his own right.

"Ashley and Andrew Weatherall were people who really inspired me," Holmes says.

"They weren't into one kind of music, they were into everything, and so was I. That inspired me to go on and make different kinds of music.

"Those two people in particular, I have a lot to thank them for, even if their inspiration was subconscious.

"I knew I could let my imagination go crazy and come up with different sounds and different moods and fuse different genres and make my music as unique as possible.

"That's still very exciting to this day, because there's still so much music to be discovered."

Holmes' diverse musical tastes - always to the fore in his DJ'ing - were showcased in his 1995 debut album This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats.

The record - with a cinematic title which unwittingly hinted what his future held - sampled snatches of music from here, there and everywhere.

It's an approach Holmes has always taken to his music. His DJ sets notably have been known to feature everything from hip hop, vintage psychedelic soul music and gospel, to punk rock, Miles Davis, Can, and even modern electronic music.

"The rules are there are no rules, and I always try to go into the studio with that in mind," Holmes says.

"I try and have the mind of a dabbler, someone who has no pre-conceived notions about how a piece of music is going to turn out, and the only way you can do that is by not following any rules, and still having a trace of naivety about you, to do the things that people who have read the text book wouldn't do."

With all the demands on his time from film producers and his desire to fire up the Free Association as a new vehicle for his creativity, Holmes says his Big Day out tour will offer people what will be an increasingly rare chance to see him DJ.

"I don't DJ as much as I used to because it's impossible to do everything and I think it's wrong to do everything," Holmes says.

"Otherwise you end up stifling your creativity in the studio. When you get to go out DJ'ing you usually end up coming home wrecked - you either get stoned or have a few whiskeys or both.

"Clubbing is a social thing, so you usually end up having a social time when you're DJ'ing, and it isn't good for me any more to have a lengthy recovery period from my little excursions.

"I love it, but it does take its toll if you do it all the time, and there's only so much time in this life to make music."

* David Holmes plays Big Day Out in Auckland on January 16.

- NZPA