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 There are some bands you are a fan of, you buy their albums, you go and see them live... and there are some bands whose music, through the media of radio, commercials and movies, has impregnated your psyche indelibly even though you couldn’t name the track or even the band!
I soon realise that both cases apply here as I excitedly brag to my friends about my next interviewee.
English duo Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes are better known as 90s seminal electronic / guitar outfit Death In Vegas and whether you are a fan or not I can guarantee that their hauntingly beautiful "Dirge" or darker "Hands Around My Throat" [among others] have, on many occasions, been floating around your sitting room since their release.
Today I meet up with producer, writer, musician Tim Holmes in his Central London studio, to chat about the still alive Death In Vegas and their illustrious collaborations, his producing for some of the biggest names in music as well as his working with smaller up and coming bands and of course his own project Electric Loop Orchestra.
Genuinely modest, charming and softly spoken Mr Holmes declares himself "a creator of sounds" when I try to brand him an artist and "an eternal fan of the feeling that music can create" when mentioning his heavy workload.
Every legend he has worked with is stated a "real gentleman" and I believe him as clearly it takes one to know one.
 Florence: You’re better known as a member/ writer in Death In Vegas with band founder Richard Fearless, however you also are a very busy music producer.
You have this wonderful recording studio in Central London...
Tim: I got this place through the work I did with Death In Vegas.
Originally I trained as a sound engineer in a big London recording studio. While I was training I worked with bands like The Chemical Brothers, on their first album, and that was the music I was into and at last I was lucky to find people that were making that kind of music.
Before that I was getting very bored with it all because I wasn’t meeting many people who were into the music for the music’s sake, and then one day DJ/ producer Andrew Weatherall came down and his attitude was just brilliant, perfect and the same attitude as mine, and through Andrew I got to do some mid-period Primal Scream.
On the back of that I started working on the first Death In Vegas’ album as an engineer. I recorded and mixed ‘Dead Elvis’ and then was asked to join the band for the second album, ‘The Contino Sessions’, and we thought that rather than give studios a lot of money we should set up our own and buy all the gear.
So we did all the Death In Vegas’ stuff here, even though we did go to India to record some strings!
Unfortunately with our last album ‘Satan’s Circus’ we were dropped from our label BMG...
Actually I don’t blame them because we gave them an Lp of weird Krautrock, with no vocals, no singles...so we put that one out on our own, which sold enough and then Richard decided to go and live in New York. He still lives there and is doing photography.
Florence: Officially Death In Vegas is not over.
Is it fair to say that the fans can expect more from the band?
Tim: Definitely!
We’ve got at least another album worth of music recorded and we just need to mix it.
It’s just not something that we want to push or stress over.
I guess that because we do not have the commercial constraints that signed bands have we can please ourselves.
It’s also good to have a bit of space away from each other as well as it’s a bit like being married, but it’s always lovely to see Richard when he is over here.
Florence: Releasing another album would mean going back on the road....Don’t you miss touring and playing live?
Tim: The only things I miss about touring are the travel and the shows and everything else is just time that you have to kill and it’s just absolutely exhausting.
So in a way I don’t miss it because I am a studio person really.
This is what I originally trained to do, to work with lots of other bands and musicians. This is what I am getting a buzz out of doing at the moment.
For instance this year I have been working with Robert Plant and that was fantastic! He has a new album coming out. I don’t know when though.
In 2002 Robert formed a band called Robert Plant and The Strange Sensation and I heard it on the radio when it came out and thought that it was really interesting. Their record came out to critical acclaim and they’ve wanted to release a second record for a while but are all extremely busy. However they’ve had these recordings knocking about for quite a while and Robert wanting someone to help him knock the tracks into shape. He came down here for a week, about a month ago, and we worked on three tracks and he wants to come back to do more!
He is a lovely guy and an absolute gentleman.
Florence: Mr Plant is a legend!
Tim: Most of these legends are really really nice people.
Iggy Pop is one of the nicest people I ever met!
Florence: Iggy is my all time hero and when I was a little girl I thought that one day I would marry him!
Tim: There is still time!
He is fantastic and so sweet. Again a perfect gentleman.
Florence: Predictably “my” Death In Vegas favourite track is ‘Aisha’, which is a perfect collaboration with Iggy because it’s such a musical departure for him...
How did you talk him into working with you bearing in mind that it wasn’t the style of music he was doing at the time?
Tim: Actually we wrote him a letter!
We didn’t do it through record companies, in fact we didn’t actually tell them until it was definite that Iggy wanted to do it.
If you tell your label about something like that they would want the press and photographers there and that’s the opposite of what Iggy Pop is about.
At the time he said: “ I really like the way you approached me, as a fan rather than being some sort of media machine.”
We took tapes out to New York, where Iggy lived at the time, and recorded it. God! that was already ten years ago!!
That was the first track we did for ‘The Contino Sessions’.
Florence: That album was very different from the first DiV release, also very accomplished, with surprising collaborations, deservedly earning a Mercury Prize Nomination in 2000.
Do you agree that this was probably your best album?
Tim: Absolutely!
That was the first one I had co-written!
Florence: With ‘The Contino Sessions’ and ‘Scorpio Rising’ you get to work with a lot of great vocalist such as Bobby Gillespie, Dot Allison, Liam Gallagher, Jim Reid....
Do you write a track specifically for a person or once the track is written do you hear Dot’s or Iggy’s voice over it?
Tim: It’s probably the latter.
We’ve never sat down and wrote a song with somebody in mind.
We work on a track and then think about who would suit it.
I love working with people who want to go that extra inch. People who are not prepared to compromise.
I think that it was Martin Scorcese who said that films are never finished, they’re merely abandoned.
Florence: Is that the way you feel about some of the tracks you’ve put together?
Can you ever think that you’ve gone as far as you could, your work is done and you feel happy about the end result.
Tim: Never happy just aware that you’ve reached a point where you can’t get anything else out of it.
Florence: Some of your tracks were used in commercials and as movies soundtracks, like ‘Dirge’, ‘Girls’, ‘Hands Around My Throat’...
How do you feel about that?
Tim: Music has always been a contributing factor to visual arts anyway.
I think that it’s nice that people can see that our music is filmic enough to be used that way.
We never did write songs for the radio.
The last Death In Vegas music that we wrote, [that isn’t finished yet], was the soundtrack for a film. We performed it at The Barbican [London] about two years ago when they had a whole day or weekend dedicated to skating and psychedelic surf movies from the 60s, and we were asked to do an hour and a half worth of music which we played live on stage in front of the film.
That was really hard work but it was great.
Florence: Tell us more about your current projects?
Tim: Right now, I am working with A.Human, among other bands.
A friend of a friend told me about them so I went to see them play.
It’s only when I saw them perform that I understood the music and the band. They sound like a cross between...if you can imagine Soft Cell fronted by Jarvis Cocker!
The lyrics are very very interesting. I did one track with them about a year ago and since then they’ve done more gigs and worked with other people and now they’ve signed a deal.
Next month I start working with Jason Pierce as I am mixing the next Spiritualized album. Most of it was recorded before Jason got very ill but of course he is better now.
Before Christmas they did a show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which I recorded. It came out absolutely amazing and it’s another body of work that might be released one day.
Also Matt Flint who played bass with Death In Vegas. I did a track with his band Deep Cut, which is coming out beginning of May. It just had its first play on BBC-6 radio yesterday!
And there is a lot more!
Florence: Do you tend to approach bands you would like to work with or do bands come to you?
Or probably a combination of both?
Tim: A bit of both.
I get a lot of people coming to me through myspace and I do get sent a lot of music.
With a band like The Tamborines for instance, I really like them so I just wanted to work with them, get them going, get a record out that people can start to hear...
Otherwise it’s generally through word of mouth.
Florence: What about your own project, Electric Loop Orchestra?
Tim: Right now it’s just me and as you can imagine I’ve got loads and loads of tracks on the go, none of which are finished but they will get done as soon as I can find the time to get to work on them.
Once again I don’t have the constraints that come with having a record label.
Florence: Nowadays and taking into consideration the revolution that the internet has been for music, does a band really need a record label?
Tim: I would happily make a record by the Electric Loop Orchestra purely for my own satisfaction rather than for the money but then again I would not know how to sell it. I wouldn’t know where to start.
I think that there are some people who get a buzz out of selling things and promoting stuff. These people know what they are doing.
That said I still don’t really understand how the music industry works.
Florence: However prioritising working with other bands makes sense as it’s also an income...
Tim: It’s an income but it’s also inspiring and exciting.
If I worked on my own stuff and that’s all I did I would probably go nuts!
It’s important to me to do a good body of work for other people, it inspires you to approach your own work with the same kind of dedication that other people have inspired in you to work on their stuff.
Take Bobby Gillespie for instance, his enthusiasm is just infectious. He is as excited to make music now as when he was in The Jesus And Mary Chain.
There are talks of someone putting out an album of covers of Suicide tracks by other artists, so this year with Bobby we did ‘Cheree’ with Marco Perroni on guitar and Wildcat Will on drums and at the moment it sounds very good, like acoustic Jesus And Mary Chain.
Florence: You’ve provided us with so many good, exciting news, I think that I’ll be back!
A message to the world perhaps?
Tim: Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster also!
Words: Florence ACHERYPhotos from Myspace
www.myspace.com/electriclooporchestra
www.myspace.com/deathinvegas |
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