Necessary Genius

Necessary Genius came out yesterday, the new single from David Holmes ahead of his album in November, a fourteen track album titled Blind On A Galloping Horse. Necessary Genius rides in on a rattling drum machine and gliding synths, a kraut/ cosmische spliced with 80s electro- pop celebration of outsiders, artists, misfits, dreamers and believers, with vocals from Raven Violet. David’s list includes Tony Wilson, Sinead O’Connor, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Angela Davis, Andrew Weatherall, Nina Simone, Terry Hall and Samuel Beckett in its rollcall of cultural inspirations, of people to believe in, alongside northern soul, rock and roll, agitprop and refugees. It’s the latest in Holmes’ recent run of songs that once over send me straight back to the beginning, clicking play again and again. This one sounds like a classic 7″ single from the glory years of that format, a short sweet blast of sideways pop music and clarion call.

Necessary Genius comes after Holmes’ pair of singles It’s Over, If We Run Out Of Love and Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (released in 2022 and 2021 respectively) and the long awaited release of that pair of songs on vinyl is finally happening in early November. Those two songs have been played round here as often as any others released since 2020 and I suspect Necessary Genius will follow suit with the rest of Blind On A Galloping Horse following close behind. 

A few weeks ago David made his monthly God’s Waiting Room radio show at NTS a two hour tribute to Sinead O’Connor, finishing with a ten minute version of his remix of Orbital’s Belfast with the vocal from Nothing Compares 2U mixed into it and then fading into an excerpt from an interview with Sinead. David read my blogpost and very kindly sent it to me. Up now for a limited time. 

Nothing Compares 2 Belfast