[The ‘Buried Treasure’ series is my attempt to uncover some great albums that deserve a larger audience. Today: David Holmes' twisted NYC freak carnival…]
Just as Mayor Rudy Guliani’s ‘Quality Of Life’ crime program was beginning to sweep the human filth from the streets of New York City, David Holmes dropped in to record some of the characters wandering those streets. Armed with a portable DAT recorder, the snatches of conversations, rants, fortune-telling, hustling, stories, and general creepiness that Holmes captured is a chilling and thrilling relic from a time before Times Square conjured up visions of Disney and the Virgin Megastore.
This is one of the scariest albums ever committed to tape, and like the city it represents, it’s filled with an energy that is constantly threatening to spill over into something dangerous. Holmes scores the spoken passages with appropriately spooky electronic works, and the album thrums with an overt promise of violence. It inspires fear, while creating a grotesque alterna-reality that you won’t be able to turn away from. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
Tags: David Holmes, Let's Get Killed, NYC
20 May 2007 at 9:48 am |
that was a great album. i think i reviewed it for a magazine when it dropped and remember having it in pretty heavy rotation for a while. there are still tracks from it i play every now and then. and its got a brilliant title
24 January 2008 at 8:46 pm |
[...] – David Holmes * Let’s Get Killed – I’ve written about this album in the past, and it’s one creepy listen. I Heart NYC, but there are some serious weirdos to [...]