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James Holden | |
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 Holden in 2006 | |
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Ariane |
| Born | 7 June 1979 Exeter, Devon, England |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | |
| Years active | 1999–present |
| Labels |
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| Website | jamesholden.org |
James Alexander Goodale Holden (born 7 June 1972) is an English electronic music artist and DJ. After beginning his career as a DJ and producer, Holden has moved extensively into live performance and founded his own record label, Border Community.
Holden grew up in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, and was first introduced to electronic music by a physics teacher at school. [2] Holden studied mathematics at Oxford University. [3]
He started his career in 1999 at age 19 and swiftly gained wider recognition with the release of trance single "Horizons", which he created with the freeware software Buzz. [4] This "crossover anthem of the summer of 1999" was picked up by Pete Tong, John Digweed and Nick Warren, quickly propelling Holden to a wider audience. [5]
In the subsequent years Holden released numerous singles and remixes on various labels including Lost Language, Perfecto Recordings, and Positiva Recordings. He was also one-third of Mainline (alongside Duncan Ellis and Hywel Dunn-Davies) and worked with singer Julie Thompson as Holden & Thompson. His remix credits for this period include artists such as Madonna, [6] Britney Spears, Depeche Mode, [7] New Order, Nathan Fake and Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid. In April 2006, his mix album James Holden At The Controls was Mixmag's 'Album of the Month'. [8]
Holden's label Border Community was founded in 2003, and made its debut with Holden's single 'A Break in the Clouds'. [9] Border Community has gone on to kickstart the careers of many young artists, including Nathan Fake, Fairmont, Luke Abbott and The MFA. [10] James Holden often performed alongside his labelmates at his Border Community label nights at Corsica Studios in London. [11]
His 2004 remix of Nathan Fake's "The Sky Was Pink" garnered attention for both Holden, Fake and Border Community. The track was described as containing "an epic universalism that fans of any genre coalesce around" and was placed at number 10 in the Resident Advisor 'Top 100 Electronic Tracks of the '00s'. [12]
In 2006, Border Community released Holden's debut album The Idiots are Winning. This album of "loose, twisted and atmospheric...electronic music" was described by The Guardian as "the most astonishing debut in electronic music since Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children .' [13]
In 2013, Holden released his second album The Inheritors , a "revealing and intriguing" album of "buzzy pastoral beauty and harsh rhythmic duress". [14] [15] After the record's release, Thom Yorke invited Holden to support Yorke's band Atoms for Peace on their US tour. [16] These shows consisted of Holden performing on modular synth alongside drummer Tom Page (of experimental electronic duo Rocketnumbernine and The Memory Band). [17] This transition from DJing to live performance would be a significant development in Holden's career and would spark a long term musical relationship with Page. [18]
The significance of Holden's embracing of live performance was clear to see in his third album, The Animal Spirits. Recorded at Holden's London studio Sacred Walls, the album saw Holden leading a five piece band spanning live drums, saxophone, other woodwinds and North African instruments. [19] This array of musicians allowed Holden to create a “spiritual jazz band playing folk / trance music” whilst keeping his "ever strident synth... front and centre". [20] The music was recorded live, without edits or overdubs, and was influenced both in sound and concept by the works of Don Cherry, Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. [21]
Animal Spirits also drew on Holden's immersion in Moroccan Gnawa music. In 2014, Holden travelled to Morocco for a week-long artistic residency to study and collaborate with the late master Mahmoud Guinia, culminating in the collaborative EP "Marhaba"; one of many that Holden would release in this period. [22]
Other collaborative releases include Outdoor Museum of Fractals with Camilo Tirado, Three Live Takes with Houssam Gania and Long Weekend with Wacław Zimpel. [23] [24]
Alexander Paul Coe, known professionally as Sasha, is a Welsh DJ and record producer. He is best known for his live events and electronic music as a solo artist, as well as his collaborations with British DJ John Digweed as Sasha & John Digweed. He was voted as World No. 1 DJ in 2000 in a poll conducted by DJ Magazine. He is a four-time International Dance Music Awards winner, four-time DJ Awards winner and Grammy Award nominee.
Leafcutter John is the recording name of John Burton, a UK-based musician and artist. He makes frequent use of Max/MSP in his compositions. Much of Burton's style is based in computer music and use of samples of everyday sounds. However, he also has roots as a folk musician, and this influence is apparent in his more recent work.
Adam Freeland is an English record producer and DJ. He is also the owner and creative director of the record label Marine Parade, which has released material by artists including Evil Nine, ILS, Alex Metric and Jape. Born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, he first began DJing in 1991, originally mixing deep house and later drum and bass. After becoming an in-demand DJ around Britain, he released his first mix album Coastal Breaks (1996) and formed the electronic music duo Tsunami One with Kevin Beber. From 1999 to 2001, Freeland hosted a show on Friday night on London's Kiss 100 FM. In 2000, he released his debut studio album, Now & Them.
Tiga James Sontag, known simply as Tiga, is a Canadian musician, DJ and record producer of electronic dance music. He has released three albums, Sexor, Ciao!, and No Fantasy Required. Sexor won the 2007 Juno Award for Dance Recording of the Year. Tiga released a selection of compilations in the early 2000s, featuring mixes such as American Gigolo, DJ-Kicks: Tiga and, Mixed Emotions, which put him on the map as one of "the world's best mixers". His compilation mix, Tiga Non-Stop, was released in November 2012, and premiered Tiga's latest single "Plush". The mix also features tracks from artists such as Kindness, Duke Dumont and Blawan.
Jack Dangers is an English electronic musician, DJ, producer, and remixer best known for his work as the primary member of Meat Beat Manifesto. He lives in San Francisco.
Nathan Fake is an English electronic music artist from Necton, Norfolk, England. He has released music on the Border Community, Ninja Tune, and Cambria Instruments labels.
Global Underground 022: Dave Seaman, Melbourne is a 2002 DJ mix album in the Global Underground series, compiled and mixed by Dave Seaman. The album peaked at #8 on the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart.
Booka Shade is a German house duo. It is made up of Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier, described as veterans of the Frankfurt electronic music scene. They have released 7 studio albums, including Memento (2004), Movements (2006), The Sun & the Neon Light (2008), More! (2010), Eve (2013), Galvany Street (2017), Cut the Strings (2018), various EPs and a mix album for DJ-Kicks.
Diamond Duggal also known as DJ Swami is a British-Indian music producer, composer, musician and AI researcher. He has produced for a number of notable artists, including Shania Twain, Pras Michel, Apache Indian, Maxi Priest, Stereo Nation, Zoheb Hassan and Viktor Kiraly as well as remixing for artists including Erasure, the Beat and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He is an accomplished guitar player and multi-instrumentalist and toured as lead guitarist with Boyzone and Robbie Williams. Diamond is also co-founder of production duo Simon and Diamond with his brother Simon Duggal. As DJ Swami, he performs and records electronic, Indian Punjabi bhangra and South Asian music both as a solo artist and as band leader of UK electronic world music acts Swami and PunjabTronix. DJ Swami also tours and performs in collaboration with Deep Forest.
NJC is a British music producer.
Joseph Wisternoff is an English electronic music producer and DJ.
Barclay Macbride Crenshaw, who is known by the stage name Claude VonStroke, is an American house producer based in Los Angeles. He owns Dirtybird Records based in San Francisco. In July 2006 he released his debut album, Beware of the Bird. He has produced a 'Fabric' mix, which was released in May 2009, and has also appeared on Pete Tong's Essential Mix Radio show in 2007, 2013, and 2020. In 2009, he released his second studio album, Bird Brain. In 2016, he was named America's Best DJ in Pioneer DJ and DJ Times’ annual poll. In 2017, he was nominated at the Electronic Music Awards for both DJ of the Year and Radio Show of the Year for "The Birdhouse".
Iason Chronis, better known as Mason, is a Dutch DJ and record producer. He had a number one on the UK Dance Singles Chart in 2007 with his track "Exceeder". Exceeder had originally been an instrumental and had received a vinyl-only release in the UK in 2006. The new version of the track, "Perfect (Exceeder)", is a mashup with American rapper Princess Superstar's song "Perfect" and reached number 3 on the national British chart in January 2007. The track was a big hit in many countries worldwide. He also had chart success in 2011 with his song "Runaway"—which is a modern version of "Runaway" by Eruption, and "Boadicea", featuring Róisín Murphy—in 2016 with "Fashion Killa", and with many club releases since. Mason is the owner of the record label Animal Language.
Mehdi Favéris-Essadi, better known by his stage name DJ Mehdi, was a French hip hop and house music producer and DJ. He was signed to the label Ed Banger Records, founded by his friend Pedro Winter, in which he released in 2006 his album Lucky Boy, also the label's debut album.
A State of Trance 2008 is the fifth compilation album in the A State of Trance compilation series mixed and compiled by Dutch DJ and record producer Armin van Buuren. The 2 disc album was released on 29 September 2008 by Armada Music. It peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums in October 2008.
Intimacy Remixed is the remix album to Intimacy, the third album by indie rock band Bloc Party. It was released on 11 May 2009 in the United Kingdom through Wichita Recordings, the band's primary label, in limited edition CD and triple LP formats to coincide with Bloc Party's worldwide touring schedule. The record entered the UK Album Chart at number 79. In the United States, it achieved a peak of number 15 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
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Kenneth James Gibson is a musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter and a founding member of Bell Gardens, Furry Things, Eight Frozen Modules, and [a]pendics.shuffle.
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The stuff everyone is really interested in begins aged 19, with a track called "Horizons". Written during his summer holidays from his maths degree at Oxford University on a £500 PC and a piece of revolutionary music software called Buzz (a freeware internet download), this crossover anthem of the summer of 1999 propelled young James and his bedroom set-up into the top flight of dance music production.
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