After 15 years of making other musicians (and several Steven Soderbergh films) sound better, DJ/producer/soundtrack specialist David Holmes has been focusing on himself. His last album, 2008's The Holy Pictures, was about as introspective as a DJ artist album could get, with his own vocal contributions and explicit references to Holmes' parents and Belfast upbringing. Apparently he's still in a reflective mood, dropping this 29-track career-spanning compilation, split into a best-of collection and a companion disc of remixes and obscurities. But more than just provide a convenient entry point to a man whose work has been enjoyed by millions of filmgoers but whose name is known by relatively few, The Dogs Are Parading lets Holmes do what he does best: weave disparate source material into a cinematic whole. It's just that, instead of pulling from his trusty crates of rare-groove vinyl, he now gets to recontextualize his own records.
Always thinking in filmic terms, Holmes applies a flashback-styled narrative to The Dogs Are Parading, starting with his most recent work-- the unreleased acid-disco theme to Soderbergh's 2009 Sasha Grey vehicle, The Girlfriend Experience-- before reaching back deeper into his catalogue. While Holmes has some fun early on juxtaposing the heady, Stone Roses rush of The Holy Pictures' "I Heard Wonders" and title track with the gritty go-go grooves of "My Mate Paul" and "Rodney Yates" (from 1997's breakthrough Let's Get Killed), he tellingly groups all four selections from his 2000 tour de force, Bow Down to the Exit Sign together in a mid-disc suite. Though Bobby Gillespie's star turn "Slip Your Skin" is noticeably absent, the Exit Sign tracks included are still prime examples of the album's masterful synthesis of inner-city claustrophobia ("Living Room") and widescreen, psychedelic splendor ("Jackson Johnson", "Hey Lisa"), and illustrate just how far Holmes had moved beyond the big-beat party music he was initially associated with.
The Dogs Are Parading makes no bones about being comprehensive; save for the Sarah Cracknell trip-hop time capsule "Gone", Holmes' 1995 debut This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats is ignored, and the collection also includes none of Holmes' signature soundtrack work. But the accompanying remix/rarities disc is something more substantial than just a grab-bag afterthought, and instead plays like an alternate-universe extension to the first. Where Disc One closes with The Holy Pictures' mournful instrumental tribute to Holmes' deceased parents, "The Ballad of Sarah and Jack", the second disc leads off with a stirring revision by recent Hot Chip/Robert Wyatt collaborators Geese that transforms the track into a string-swept Dirty Three-style weeper. Equally bold are the competing Arab Strap and Mogwai takes on Let's Get Killed's Gainsbourgian funk workout "Don't Die Just Yet", with the former using it as a template for another blue-balled Aidan Moffat monologue, and the latter amplifying the song's underlying menace into murderous noise.
Not all of these reworkings live up to the star power of the names attached-- the previously unreleased Kevin Shields mix of "Living Room" doesn't touch his MBV Arkestra dismemberment of Primal Scream's "If They Move, Kill 'Em" from the same era-- while studio leftovers like the percussive jam "Lower Orders" don't distinguish themselves in the absence of Holmes' usual conceptual frameworks. But when it comes to compiling the soundtrack to David Holmes' life, we should expect nothing less from him than the extended director's cut.
