David Holmes’s sonic smorgasbord has veered wildly away from dance music’s set menus ever since his first releases in the early 90s with the Disco Evangelists, his five albums mixing an often warped take on musical trends of the time with a cinematic vision which inevitably led to writing for the big screen. Within a few years Holmes was scoring the Oceans series while able to make chart splashes with the dubbed-up frug of ‘My Mate Paul’. He also showed he could thrive in a sleazy funk band with the Free Association project and unveiled glistening, emotional vocal reflections on 2008’s beautiful The Holy Pictures set. A compilation was long overdue so Holmes has selected and edited a representative two CDs worth of highlights, outside remixes [like Geese’s take on ‘The Ballad Of Sarah And Jack’ or Andrew Weatherall’s mix of the incandescent ‘I Heard Wonders’], plus three new tracks, including ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ from Steven Soderberg’s recent movie of the same name. The absence of ‘No Man’s Land’, the chilling epic which started his 1995 debut album, This Film’s Crap, Let’s Slash The Seats, is one glaring omission but shows how much quality tackle this ferociously-questing talent had to choose from.
5 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Kris Needs