Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

Summer has finally gatecrashed its way into northern England and we've had the sudden appearance of the aurora borealis all over the country (I missed this on Friday night, having gone to bed. I woke up on Saturday morning to everyone else's photos of the northern lights on display in the skies all over the nation). It's been too nice to spend too long sitting indoors in front of a computer screen so this mix was a little thrown together in a rush but it's turned out quite well- a selection of remixes of other artists by David Holmes from the last few years.

Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Orbital: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
• Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
• X- Press 2 ft. Kele Okereke: Phasing You Out (David Holmes Remix)

The Sky Without You was the opener on Andy Bell's solo album Flicker, released in 2022, a blur of backwards guitars and reversed vocals inspired by the backwards songs The Stone Roses recorded in 1989- Don't Stop, Guernica, Full Fathom Five, Simone (in fact, there's the germ of an idea for another mix...). David's remix came out on 10" vinyl and digital in October 2022, a remix inspired by microdosing during lockdown in Belfast. The I Am A Strange Loop EP also came with remixes by Richard Norris, bdrmm, A Place To Bury Strangers and Claude Cooper- even among that company Holmes' remix stands out.

The Vendetta Suite is Gary Irwin, a stalwart of the Belfast club and music world. The album The Kempe Stone Portal came out in 2021, with some remixes following a year later including David's remix of Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise which is a psychedelic/ acid house monster, a huge sounding record that fills any space it's played in, a genuinely transportative piece of music.

Jo Sims' Bass- The Final Frontier came out on Pamela Records last year, Holmes' remix one of '23's highlights. Space house. 

David's remix of Belfast was done for Orbital's 30soemthing album, a celebration of three decades of Orbital. The original was recorded after the Hartnoll brothers played at David's club in Belfast in May 1990. The even more recent version with Mike Garry, Tonight In Belfast, is one of 2024's highlights. 

Lisa Moorish's Sylvia came out in spring 2024, a song recorded as a tribute to writer Sylvia Plath. In April we stayed in Heptonstall while attending the AW61 celebrations in Todmorden. Sylvia is buried in the graveyard at Heptonstall, that's her grave in the picture above (with Ted Hughes' name scrubbed off by Sylvia's fans). Her grave has hundreds of pens sticking out of the soil, left by visitors. Holmes' remix is crunchy acid house, and was played at AW61 by Mark and then not long after by me (duh!).

X- Press 2's Phasing You Out is from their 2023 album Thee, a return to form by Rocky and Diesel, with former Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke on guest vocals. Holmes' remix is a full on, city scape sounding record, ending in a sea of sirens and traffic after several minutes of busy, high tempo drums. Makes it quite difficult to sequence/ mix but it had to go on this mix as I really like it. 

Yeah

David Holmes is here on a weekly basis at the moment, his Blind On A Galloping Horse album, the series of singles that came ahead of it and DJ gigs to promote it providing a rich vein of inspiration. The latest single from the album is Yeah x 3, Raven Violet's vocals clear and centre, singing David's lines about taking a shot of equanimity and not needing to sleep in a bed with toxicity. Personal liberation, living in the now, free from fear. 

There are two remix packages, one already out and one to follow. The first has remixes by Sonic Boom and Panda Bear, who take that psychedelic 60s pop sound from their Reset album and magnify it, the bassline sounding like Hooky has joined a 1966 San Francisco acid freak out group, by X- Press 2 (a delicious funky, house remix and dub), one by Jordan Nocturne (chopped up voice, stuttering synths, pulsing bass) and a pair by Belfast friend The Vendetta Suite, the Reason To Live remix which is a Wall Of Sound tour de force and the Reason To Drift remix which is a blissed out, twinkling ambient haze. All are superb and all can be bought/ heard here. 

Remixes go both ways. Last year David remixed Getting To The Point from Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's album, the 60s psyche and bubblegum underpinned by an insistent drum machine, plentiful bubbling sounds and a lovely long fade out.

Much more recent is David's remix of X- Press 2, whose recent new album I've been meaning to get to and haven't yet. Phasing You Out has Kele Okereke on vocals and in David's hands is an eight minute trippy, percussive drum workout, Kele's voice on top of the multi- rhythmic ride, ending in a blare of police sirens.