{"id":519,"date":"2016-10-14T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/?p=519"},"modified":"2016-10-14T15:04:09","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:04:09","slug":"late-night-tales-david-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/?p=519","title":{"rendered":"Late Night Tales: David Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"late-night220\"<\/a>Late Night Tales: David Holmes
\n(Late Night Tales)<\/p>\n

\u2018Johnny Favourite\u2019 was a David Holmes release on the Warp label in 1994, a clanking, 15 minute descent. The title was a nod to Mickey Rourke in the film Angel Heart, a private investigator hired to find the elusive entertainer Johnny Liebling. The journey took Rourke to New Orleans, where he encountered blood and bad magic, lashing him into a voodoo loop, a Faustian buy-out. At the end of the film, Lucifer repossessed his soul and the elevator took him on a terminal ride to Hell.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Looking back, you can see that Holmes has been a consistent myth-maker, using music to underscore and overload, to suggest and inspire. Likewise he has used archetypal figures to rich effect; the fortune teller, the trickster, the lost soul, the searcher and the labyrinth. \u2018Let\u2019s Get Killed\u2019, his 1997 journey through the fever of a New York night was the stuff of Orpheus, redeemed by \u2018Don\u2019t Die Just Yet\u2019 and the option to exit the darkness.<\/p>\n

But David has often returned to this story. His 2015 film I Am Here<\/em><\/a> was a lyrical call to his deceased brother Michael, following his spirit trail through confusion and anxiety, finally re-connecting with the ancestral source in a version of T\u00edr na n\u00d3g<\/em>, the Celtic realm of the other.<\/p>\n

\u2018Late Night Tales: David Holmes\u2019 stays true to this impulse. There is original, astonishing music. Friends have been encouraged to provide new works. Thirdly, David infuses the experience with selections by the likes of David Crosby, The Children Of Sunshine and Buddy Holly \u2013 who sounds spectral and gone on \u2018Love Is Strange\u2019.<\/p>\n

The twilight aspect suits the lesser-known selections. Barry Woolnough\u2019s \u2018Great Father Spirit In The Sky\u2019 was recently issued by Andrew Weatherall on his Moine Dubh label. It sounds like Peter La Farge, sometime mystic of Greenwich Village and it opens the record fine. Later, Spark Sparkle references Edward Lear on \u2018Slythtovery\u2019 but the mood recalls those midnight wanderings of Bowie and Iggy through the Turkish quarter of Neuk\u00f6ln, Berlin.<\/p>\n

\u2018Henry McCullough\u2019 is a homage recorded by BP Fallon and David on the day of the guitarist\u2019s funeral. Beep was frequently there as a scenester, reporter and Zelig and thus he declaims about Henry\u2019s collisions with Hendrix, Woodstock, Wings and the shuddering demands of a pioneering life. It has meaning and wonder.<\/p>\n

\u2018Late Night Tales: David Holmes\u2019 asks you to submit to the author\u2019s flow, to allow the subconscious to be touched. It involves lullabies and drones, spikes of insight and emotion and then an outstanding finish. Seamus Heaney\u2019s posthumous collection was a translation from Book VI of Virgil\u2019s The Aeneid<\/em>. In this, the Trojan warrior is lost and grieving for his father Anchises. So, the exiled hero makes his way into the underworld to meet his dad and to receive a vision.<\/p>\n

The encounter is joyous on both sides. But there is grief also. The son and the father try to embrace three times, but this intimacy is denied between the living and the dead. Stephen Rea reads the poem, quietly wise to Heaney\u2019s translation and his Irish inflections. The music is supplied by David and Jon Hopkins, a musical experiment they began in a previous decade which has now found an immense expression. It gives you sorrow and also solace. You resolve to dream it again.<\/p>\n

Stuart Bailie<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late Night Tales: David Holmes (Late Night Tales) \u2018Johnny Favourite\u2019 was a David Holmes release on the Warp label in 1994, a clanking, 15 minute descent. The title was a nod to Mickey Rourke in the film Angel Heart, a private investigator hired to find the elusive entertainer Johnny Liebling. The journey took Rourke to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digwithit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}