Music Arcades: David Holmes: This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats

Last year I got to 17th April without buying a single CD or record, other than those that arrived willy nilly with magazine subscriptions. I'm sure I bragged about that at the time, but I can't find exactly where just now. This year I bought twelve CDs in January alone.

I'm trying to cut down, but it's hard, isn't it? I saw this CD second-hand on Amazon for £2.44 including post and packaging. That's less than a pint of beer in most London pubs, and works out at about 16 pence for every 5 minutes of music. That's impulse-buy territory: by the time you've had a few seconds to reflect on it, you've already got an email confirming your order.

Gill played me this in the office in 1997. I liked it immediately, with the tolling bell and the atmospheric rhythms. I got Gill to do me a cassette at the time, but, hell, the cost of a blank cassette is not far short of £2.44, so let's have the original product.

Although it comes from roughly the same place (and time) as last month's Moby and Coldcut albums, there's something about this one that convinces me where those didn't. I don't think I'd noticed before, but it's co-produced by the guys from Sabres of Paradise, so that may be part of it.

Around that time David Holmes had a bar in Belfast, somewhere round Botanic Avenue I think. M and I visited once, but before we'd been able to order drinks we decided it was too trendy for the likes of us.

David Holmes' current single, I Heard Wonders, sounds great coming out of the radio. Here's its video.