David Holmes releasing Blind On A Galloping Horse 2LP on Friday

David Holmes' new album, Blind On A Galloping Horse features an unreleased song by his late friend Andrew Weatherall.

Here's the scoop...

David Holmes has announced details of his latest recording, Blind On A Galloping Horse, due for release on Heavenly Recordings on November 10th which is his first solo album since 2008. 

A 14-track interrogation of the last decade, time spent watching a decaying, fraying Britain visibly buckling in real time while tending to his own battles with mental health. Holmes’ soundtrack to this inquiry is at times claustrophobic, often euphoric, driven by the rattle and snap of analogue drum machines, wild oscillations of droning analogue synths and the voice of Raven Violet which beguiles and commands in a way that could part oceans. 

On this record, there are songs of hope for an age of uncertainty; love songs to leap the barricades to and, on Necessary Genius, a comprehensive roll call of the great and good - those ‘dreamers, misfits, radicals, outcasts’ that we’ve lost and just a few who’ve managed to cling on in the churn of the 21st century. And there are elegiac electronics evocative of an endless Europe where pulsating, crackling rhythm tracks fuse with dreamlike textures and the underground pulse of psychedelic therapy to form something unique that feels nothing less than radical. 

Blind On A Galloping Horse was written, produced and arranged by David Holmes. The album features updated versions of the previously released singles Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love and a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes’ late friend Andrew Weatherall (I Laugh Myself To Sleep). All of the album’s artwork was designed by British graphic designer Jimmy Turrell. The cover shot was taken post riot in 70’s Belfast by local cult street photographer Bill Kirk.

Get a copy of the new David Holmes release Blind On A Galloping Horse via Bandcamp right here. Listen to "Necessary Genius" and "Stop Apologizing" below. 

R.I.P. Andrew Weatherall, 1963-2020

Sadly, UK DJ/producer and remixer deluxe Andrew Weatherall passed away this morning from a pulmonary embolism. He'll be greatly missed. 

Jah Wobble & Mark Stewart's Brexit response: "A Very British Coup"

Keith Levene joins PiL-mates Jah Wobble, Richard Dudanski and The Pop Group's Mark Stewart for the anti-Brexit anthem "A Very British Coup"

Jah Wobble's new 4-song EP A Very British Coup is available now via Amazon right here. 

Andy Votel unleashes second volume of synth curios on Plastic Dance 2

Plastic Dance 2 features tracks from Stabat Stable, Beach Surgeons, Ti-Tho, Cosmic Overdose and pragVEC

Here's the scoop from Andrew Weatherall...

Greetings sisters and brothers. Let’s talk about reductionist revolution and the kicking in of doors. Let’s talk of iconoclasts and culture bombs. Let’s talk about moral panic and censorship. Let’s talk about punk rock.

On second thought, let’s not bother. The white noise is already deafening and actually, thinking about it, the Sex Pistols were really a heavy metal band with a funny singer and the whole shebang eventually, as all revolutions do, succumbed to conservative dogma and self parody. And anyway, as Dr Cooper Clarke said, “punks were just hippies with zips”.

Instead, sisters and brothers, let’s talk about the dangerous counterrevolutionaries who went out and bought a cheap synth and a rudimentary drum machine. The ones that got what ‘punk’ was really about. The democratization of art. A democratization unhindered by rules concerning the means of production. A democratization forged in the blazing fire of unrestricted influence. A democratization free of perceived notions of “talent”. Sniffing Glue said learn three chords and form a band, Throbbing Gristle said why learn any chords at all… I am an artist because I say I am. More Marcel Duchamp than Malcolm McLaren.

So, sisters and brothers, who do you think led the counter-revolution? Well I’ll tell you. It was the man who stormed the Bastille and kicked the door down in the first place and he did it on the 16th July 1977. With the help of Tommy Vance. John Lydon’s playlist that night on Vance’s show included Tim Buckley, The Creation, Augustus Pablo, Bobby Byrd, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Peter Hammill and Can and put paid to any punk rock “year zero” claims. Meanwhile, locked out of the studio, Malcolm had to listen to the counterrevolutionary manifesto being broadcast across the metropolis. Mark that date in your diaries, sisters and brothers: 16th July, the anniversary of the birth of “post punk”. Just over a year later in October, Lydon rammed the point home with the release of Public Image, a personal and musical manifesto in 7” form.

The music on Plastic Dance 2 is the strangely coloured, distorted and frighteningly beautiful fruit of the seeds planted on that fateful day. Lessons learned and inspiration taken from the sonic aesthetics of dub, knowing that not all disco sucked and that even jazz was allowed. Music shaped by wonky approximation and appropriation. The artists on Plastic Dance 2 were artists because they said they were. Listen to their work and you’ll know they were. Listen in transcendent wonderment as George Attwell creates alchemical space funk in his home studio… as a future Mock Turtle and members of The Manchester Music Collective channel Robert Calvert and Bill Nelson… as Korzynski comes on like a Jeff Mills remix of Terry Riley. Listen in the wide-eyed joy of being as Stabat Stable’s drum machine runs amok to the accompaniment of discordant organ stabs… as a future founder of 808 State channels Albert Ayler alongside a galloping synth arpeggio.

I’ll stop right there, brothers and sisters, as crass comparison does this art no justice.

Andrew Weatherall

Plastic Dance 2: Domestic Synth Pop & Patchbay Punk Compiled by Andy Votel & Doug Shipton
01. George Atwell - Meat Grinder
02. Vibrant Thigh - Walking Away
03. Stabat Stable - IIO
04. Cos - Einstein
05. Beach Surgeons - Chicken Skin Planet (Edit)
06. Cosmic Overdose - Råttan
07. Andrzej Korzynski - Zombie House
08. Ti-Tho - Die Liebe Ist Ein Abenteuer
09. Gerry And The Holograms - Jeep (Version)
10. pragVEC - Welcome Home