This Film's Crap

How can it be that David Holmes' debut album is over 30 years old?!

This Film's Crap Let's Slash The Seats managed two weeks in the UK album charts in July 1995, peaking in its first week at #51. That said, not bad for a largely instrumental album, soundtracking imaginary movies that you may think twice before watching anyway.

The singles were no less uncompromising: Minus 61 In Detroit coming in at over nine minutes and album opener No Mans Land pushing the envelope even further, twelve minutes and forty five seconds of nerve tapping twitchiness.

Like Johnny Favourite, the non-album single that preceded them, neither single managed to break out of the Top 80 in their 1-2 week stay in the charts.

Record label Go! Beat played what I guess they thought was their trump card by following up with a third and final single the following April, with Gone. Another lengthy album track at just over eight minutes, Gone at least got a radio edit for the single release, although whether it could be described as 'radio friendly' is another matter.

Propelled by bass, guitar (courtesy of Keith Tenniswood) and a shuffling percussion, the key selling point is the guest vocal from Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne.

The lyrics are confined to a mere eighteen words

I'm gonna hide

She don't even know

I'm gonna run away

And you can never go on anymore

And you can never go on anymore

...although I'd always heard that final refrain as 

And you can never go home anymore

...which I prefer, but what do I know?

Gone fared slightly better than the previous three singles, although by 'better' I mean that it managed a single week in the chart at #75. 

Not that David appeared bothered in the least. Six months later, he was back with My Mate Paul, his first Top 40 hit, and a second album (Let's Get Killed) the following year, which did the same. And then he got properly into soundtracks, which was a game changer.

This Film's Crap Let's Slash The Seats is the David Holmes album I revisit the least, not because it's not much good but more that I need to be in a certain mood/frame of mind to listen to it. 

At the weekend, to mark a re-release of the album for Record Store Day, a video (and radio edit!) emerged of the kind-of-title-track Slash The Seats.

As a reminder of David's first album, and Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns' first major (co)production project following the part of The Sabres Of Paradise, it's an astonishing piece of music that still hits hard, three decades on.