James Holden

band leader, mix engineer, software developer and all round jack of all vaguely musical

trades. He lives in London with his partner (in life and business) Gemma, and their rescue

Staffy Heidi.

Holden was just nineteen years old and not quite finished university when he fell into a

professional career in the more commercialised end of dance music, when an early 12”

(Horizons) was picked up by a Sony Music-backed imprint in the trance glory days of

1999. A career as an international DJ and remixer to the stars (from Madonna and

Britney to Radiohead, New Order and Depeche Mode) opened up before him, aided

and abetted by his own proudly DIY Border Community imprint and a certain

unstoppable remix of label protege Nathan Fake’s The Sky Was Pink, a bonafide dance

anthem which in various corners of electronic music came to define the sound of the

mid-noughties. In 2006 he gently flexed his album muscles with the prescient The Idiots

Are Winning, an EP of idiosyncratic dancefloor bangers and DJ tools which somehow

swelled to album proportions and cemented Holden’s status as a vibrant new force in

electronic music.

But it was seven years later with the pagan thud of his epic landmark second album The

Inheritors in 2013 that his path would take a bold left turn, prompting him to eventually

hang up his DJ headphones and take a portable incarnation of his modular synth rig out

on the road instead, accompanied by the live drums of Tom Page (Rocketnumbernine,

Neneh Cherry) and the occasional saxophone flourish from France’s Etienne Jaumet

(Zombie Zombie, The Caterpillar’s Intervention). By the time of the recording sessions of

his third artist album The Animal Spirits in 2016 Holden had grown his band to six,

drafting in extra brass and percussion to assemble his own fantasy spiritual jazz

ensemble (also to be known as The Animal Spirits) that would perform his new set of

synth-led folk-trance standards, recorded all in one room in a series of live takes, no

overdubs, no edits, under the direction of emergent band leader Holden. Further side

project collaborations with Swiss accordion player Mario Batkovic, Polish clarinettist

Waclaw Zimpel, Moroccan gnawa masters Maalem Houssam Guinia and his late father

Maalem Mahmoud Guinia, and tabla player Camilo Tirado have continued to keep live

collaborative performance firmly at the forefront of Holden’s practice.

Fast forward to 2023, and although the studio-assembled audio collage of his new

generically-unconstrained solo album of rave music for a parallel universe Imagine This

Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities undoubtedly stands somewhat in

contrast to the expanded band and live take dogma of its jazz adjacent predecessor, it

also seems to represent a coming-to-terms with Holden’s own musical past, with subtle

nods and callbacks to notable moments in this twenty year long sonic history alongside

the odd guest contribution from wider members of the Animal Spirits live family. The

undulating dancefloor melancholy of In The End You’ll Know and the spiralling kinetic

pixie arpeggios and hazy vocals of Trust Your Feet and Continuous Revolution awaken

the distant memory of his erstwhile DJ career, whilst the driving synth and drum, pagan

thud, synthesized strings and woozy shimmering nostalgia of his landmark Inheritors era

remains omnipresent (Continuous Revolution, Worlds Collide Mountains Form, The

Answer Is Yes, Infinite Fadeout), albeit with a somewhat lighter and brighter sheen.

“For a while in the mid 2010s I couldn't hear dance music anymore, a single kick drum

had me lunging for the skip button, but I've found my way back to that — reclaiming the

bits I liked (the hypnotism, the utopianism, the wide ranging cross cultural freedom) and

leaving behind what I don't need,” he explains. “I wanted this to be my most open

record, uncynical, naive, unguarded, the record teenage me wanted to make. It’s like a

dream of rave, a fantasy about a transformative music culture that would make the

world better.” And as if to prove he means business, after a ten year abstinence Holden

has recently dipped his toe back into the remixing culture where he built his name, with

XAM Duo (Sonic Cathedral), GoGo Penguin (Blue Note) and Lost Souls of Saturn

(R&S) the latest blessed recipients of a Holden rework.

With a whole new raft of alternative rave anthems ready to unleash on the world, Holden

(plus selected guest performers) are currently readying themselves to take his

improvisation-ready bespoke live set-up back out on the road, which combines his own

self-designed and 3D printed computer and modular synth case with a carefully chosen

selection of synth modules and his own self-coded digital plug ins. Holden is a long-time

advocate of Cycling74's Max/MSP programming language, and most recently he has

used it to build an ambitious modular sequencing and synthesis environment to facilitate

his live performances, which he also (in keeping with his collectivist impulses) plans to

make available to other budding music makers via his website.

Further reading:

- James Holden talks to John Doran for The Quietus:

https://thequietus.com/articles/32610-james-holden-interview