Unloved - Guilty of love

[simonkeeping]

A while back posts were popping up from David Holmes on Facebook, pictures of girl groups - The Ronnettes, Shangri- La's, intriguing stuff, and finally the debut EP dropped late last year.

In the interests of clarity I'll say here and now I've always been down with what David Holmes has been involved in musically. His production work always has traces and echoes of his incredible psych record collection (remember those incredible DJ sets?), always going the opposite direction, mining the unknown - put simply - making stuff sound fucked up and weird. For me this sums up what rock and roll is all about. Being the underdog, the underclass. Plotting your own course. Where ever he choose to set sail I've always been onboard.

The new project came out of a night he was involved in over in LA where some of the finest session musicians in the U.S. got together and play music. He was the house DJ and from that collaboration was asked to pick tracks for the band to play. This developed into a musical project with him, Keefus Ciancia and Jade Vincent.

Digging into the French sounds Holmes was spinning, like Françoise Hardy and Brigitte Fontaine, as well as The Shangri-Las, The Ronettes, The Crystals and Marianne Faithfull, and the productions of Phil Spector, Jack Nitzsche and George “Shadow” Morton, the group pulled together the band they'd been playing with at the night as well as a roster of other musicians that read like a who's who of greatest musicians from the last 50 years. The Harmonica player (Tommy Morgan) who played on Pet sounds, The Elvis Comeback special, the Carpenters etc etc. Jim Keltner who played with Lennon, Dylan, George Harrison etc etc. Wayne Kramer from the MC5. Madness.

They recorded at Vox studios which is where some of those great records where made. the results are impressive to say the least. Its a record completely out of its time - but that's not to say it sounds retro or dated, for me it sound otherworldly - Its a dark, reverb filled, psychedelic masterpiece. Holmes' solo work has always been exciting but perhaps of late, if I'm being entirely honest, the songwriting didn't have the depth the ideas and sounds he layered on them required. It should have been amazing but some of it fell flat. This isn't like that, these are truly great songs. Immense pop hooks but with darkness in their soul.

Funnily enough I was thinking about this a few weeks back - Records like this don't come along very often, The Avalanches (debut and still only album release) was maybe the last one? Something just comes out of nowhere and blows your mind. Whether Unloved do anything after this I'm not sure? I think this record has been sitting around waiting to be put out for 3 years? It's a great record, one that once you've listened to you flip back over and play again. I strongly urge you to pick it up.

[johnnyboy]

Amen to that. It's a mighty fine record.

[spunder]

hmmmm intriguing , will listen at home tonight. in the meantime read this entertaining review!

http://www.syffal.com/album-reviews/unl ... ty-love-ep

[ro]

Wow, thank you Simon, those are some great sounds!

[mkb]

Yeah, it's great. Initially I felt it was perhaps too indebted to those classic girl groups and a bit too retro, but as you say, there's a lot more going on in there.

Holmes is someone who rarely puts a foot wrong.

[johnnyboy]

One of my favourites from the first EP is Far From Here, a track where you can really here those 60's girl group sounds going on. The album is darker, especially the second half, sides C & D if you have the vinyl. The LP is a beautiful package actually, really great artwork and photographs with a big fold out poster too. Get hooked up to the official Facebook page as that has some great videos and interviews posted up onto it.

Full EP (plus a photo of the beautiful Jade Vincent) here http://www.clashmusic.com/videos/premie ... of-love-ep

David Holmes played a DJ set at Rough Trade East on the day of release which I was going to go to but then fell ill with a bad man-cold instead. I'm wondering if they'll play some actual live dates, pretty sure they've done one in LA, but maybe that's it. Could be quite cool to just keep it as a recording project as I can imagine it'd be hard to recreate that vibe in a live setting, though it would be good in a small club like Ronnie Scott's.

Weatherall has remixed both the singles so far, which haven't bettered the originals in my opinion but he did give this great quote about the album, just to tempt you in further if you haven't heard it yet.

"Like all truly great music it kicks open a portal to a parallel universe".

[simonkeeping]

hmmmm intriguing , will listen at home tonight. in the meantime read this entertaining review!

http://www.syffal.com/album-reviews/unl ... ty-love-ep

That is actually amazing...

[Soarer]

This sounds great. I like it.

As mentioned, a retro vibe, but something much deeper.

[One Asian Under A Groove]

I'm firmly in the "David Holmes can do no wrong" boat. His Essential Mixes, his film scores and his albums under his own name and with The Free Association. In particular, "The Holy Pictures" is nigh on perfect to me - "I Heard Wonders" has a huge amount of personal significance, one of my Desert Island Discs. The Unloved album is another fantastic project of his - I don't know enough about the influences that have been mentioned, so I can't tell if it's particularly derivative or not. I just love the sound, the drama of it all. And I agree with johnnyboy above - Far From Here is sublime. Between this, the Underworld album and Mogwai's "Atomic", 2016 just got good.

[Hedspace]

a recent soiundtrack special on NTS radio from the man himself.
https://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/david ... arch-2016/