David Holmes

A highly regarded DJ and producer and award-winning film composer, David Holmes' deep musical knowledge informs every aspect of his work. After beginning his career by spinning at clubs in his native Belfast as a teen and issuing several techno and progressive house singles during the early '90s, his ambitious 1995 debut album, This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats introduced the cinematic mystique that defined his style. The 1997 follow-up Let's Get Killed was a bigger hit that established Holmes' name in the U.S., and he soon began scoring films such 1998's Out of Sight and 2001's blockbuster Ocean's Eleven, both of which combined the artful sampling and kinetic rhythms of his dance background with a keen sense of mood. Since then, he has juggled his multiple careers, programming several Essential Mixes on BBC Radio 1, composing acclaimed scores for projects such as The Fall, '71, and Killing Eve, founding the dream pop band Unloved, and releasing albums ranging from the psych-pop of 2008's The Holy Pictures to the meditative synth pop of 2023's Blind on a Galloping Horse. Born in Belfast as the youngest of ten children, Holmes listened to punk rock as a child and began DJing at the age of 15 -- his sets at pubs and clubs around the city during the next few years embraced a range of grooves, including soul-jazz, mod rock, Northern soul, and disco. Holmes worked as an underground concert promoter and wrote a fanzine as well, though he was still just a teenager when the house and techno boom hit Britain in the late '80s. Soon he was integrating the new dance music into his mixing, and his club night, Sugar Sweet, became the first venue for serious dance music in Northern Ireland. Back-and-forth contact between England and Northern Ireland brought Holmes into contact with leading DJs Andrew Weatherall, Darren Emerson, and Ashley Beedle. After familiarizing himself with the studio, he began recording with Beedle (later of Black Science Orchestra) to produce the single "DeNiro" (as Disco Evangelists), a sizable dancefloor hit in 1993. Also that year, his Scubadevils project (a collaboration with Dub Federation) released "Celestial Symphony," which appeared on the first volume of the seminal compilation series Trance Europe Express, as well as on a NovaMute-issued 12" along with a track by Holmes under the alias Death Before Disco. That first taste of success brought Holmes much remixing work during 1993-1994 for Weatherall's Sabres of Paradise, St. Etienne, Therapy?, and Justin Warfield, among others. Under his own name, he released the Tangerine Dream-sampling single "Johnny Favourite" on Warp in 1994. He later signed to Go! Discs and released his debut album, This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats, in July 1995. Peaking at 51 on the U.K. Albums chart, the album featured other ties to film besides the cinema-terrorist persona evoked in the title: the single "No Man's Land" had been written in response to the controversial Guildford Four film In the Name of the Father. Television director Lynda La Plante ended up using many of the tracks from the album for her series Supply & Demand, and one track was used in the Sean Penn/Michael Douglas film The Game. Holmes then started work on his first proper soundtrack for Marc Evans' 1998 film Resurrection Man. The experience inspired Holmes to travel to New York to gather a wealth of urban-jungle environment recordings -- including Cuban street dancers -- that he wove into his second proper album, October 1997's Let's Get Killed. Acclaimed for its mix of energy and atmosphere, the album reached number 34 in the U.K. and featured the single "My Mate Paul" (which was later used as the theme music to the Sony PlayStation game Psybadek). Holmes won Best Rock Artist at Ireland's National Entertainment Awards, marking the first time a dance artist won the award. The remix collection Stop Arresting Artists appeared in 1998, the same year he scored Steven Soderbergh's A-list Hollywood feature Out of Sight with a prescient set of groove-funk. Containing his award-winning funk/soul mix for the long-running Radio 1 series, Essential Mix 98/01 followed later that year. In 1999, This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats was reissued with a bonus disc of rarities and unreleased tracks. Holmes issued his third studio effort, Bow Down to the Exit Sign, in September 2000. Merging psych-rock with trip-hop, the album included guest appearances from Jon Spencer, Martina Topley-Bird, and Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie; it peaked at 22 on the U.K. Album Charts. The remix album Holmes on the Decks also arrived that year. Holmes reunited with Soderbergh to produce 2001's Ocean's Eleven soundtrack, which pushed Junkie XL's remix of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" into the charts (as well as the top spot in many countries). Holmes' next project was the Free Association, a studio band featuring his 13 Amp labelmate Stephen Hilton. The group debuted with 2002's mix album Come Get It, I Got It, where Holmes and Hilton mixed and matched older tracks with new productions. Late that same year, a full album of new tracks, David Holmes Presents the Free Association, (which was reissued with a new track order in 2006) followed it onto the racks and reached 78 on the U.K. Album Charts. Following the album's release, the Free Association went on tour. For the next few years, Holmes concentrated on scoring and curating, composing the music for 2003's Code 46 and Stander and compiling 2004's Cherrystones: Hidden Charms, a collection of rare '60s psych-rock. His other releases from this time include the score to 2005's The War Within and 2007's original score for the film Ocean's Thirteen. Holmes returned in September 2008 with his fourth album Holy Pictures. Incorporating a live band, more song-oriented material and his own vocals alongside a wealth of electronics, it was a departure from the imaginary soundtrack style of his previous work. Topping out at 65 on the U.K. Album Charts, the album was nominated for Ireland's Choice Music Prize. That year, Holmes worked with Leo Abrahams on the score to Hunger, Steve McQueen's film about the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, for which the pair won an Irish Film and Television Award in 2009. His first proper retrospective, The Dogs Are Parading: The Very Best of David Holmes, was released by UME in 2010. Two years later, the Holy Pictures track "I Heard Wonders" soundtracked part of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. In 2013, Holmes' film production company, Canderblinks Films, released its first project, the BAFTA-nominated Good Vibrations: A Record Shop, A Label, A Film Soundtrack. A comedic drama set in Belfast, Ireland's punk scene in the '70s, the film featured music by the composer as well as definitive songs from the era. That year, Holmes began scoring the crime thriller TV series The Fall, which was nominated for an RTS Craft and Design award in 2013 and won the 2014 Irish Film and Television Award for Best Score. Around this time, Holmes formed Unloved, a dark, dreamy pop group that included composer/keyboardist Keefus Ciancia -- with whom he first worked on the score to the 2012 film Haywire -- and singer/songwriter Jade Vincent. He also continued scoring, winning an IFTA for his work on the first series of The Fall and an Ivor Novello Award for his music for Yann Demange's '71. In 2015, Holmes wrote, directed, and scored the film I Am Here, which was inspired by the death of his brother. He won another Ivor Novello Award for his music to the acclaimed BBC series London Spy in 2016. Other works that year included the Mindhorn score, a Late Night Tales compilation, and Unloved's debut album, Guilty of Love. In 2017, Holmes scored Soderbergh's heist comedy Logan Lucky. He also produced Who Built the Moon?, the third album by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Holmes' score to the HBO limited series Mosaic was released in 2018. The following year, he and Ciancia won a BAFTA TV Craft Award for their music for the acclaimed series Killing Eve, while Unloved released its second album Heartbreak. Two years later, Holmes worked with Brian Irvine on the score for Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D'Sa's film Ordinary Love. That year, Unloved released the single "Strange Effect," a collaboration with singer/writer Raven Violet, who also appeared on 2022's The Pink Album. On his own, Holmes scored the films Lyra and Marlowe before reuniting with Unloved in early 2023 for the psychedelia- and Tropicalia-tinged EP Polychrome: The Pink Album Postlude. That November, Holmes released his first solo album in 15 years. Featuring Violet on lead vocals, Blind On A Galloping Horse reflected the tumultuous times in the world and in his own life since Holy Pictures and included a recording of a previously unreleased song by his late friend Andrew Weatherall.
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