James Alexander Goodale Holden (born 7 June 1979) is a Britishelectronic 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.
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 softwareBuzz.[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]
Holden's label Border Community was founded in 2003, and made its debut with Holden's single 'A Break in the Clouds'.[10][11] Border Community has gone on to kickstart the careers of many young artists, including Nathan Fake, Fairmont, Luke Abbott and The MFA.[12] James Holden often performed alongside his labelmates at his Border Community label nights at Corsica Studios in London.[13]
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'.[14]
In 2013, Holden released his second album The Inheritors, a "revealing and intriguing" album of "buzzy pastoral beauty and harsh rhythmic duress".[17][18] After the record's release, Thom Yorke invited Holden to support Yorke's band Atoms For Peace on their US tour.[19] These shows consisted of Holden performing on modular synth alongside drummer Tom Page (of experimental electronic duo Rocketnumbernine and The Memory Band).[20] 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.[21]
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.[22] 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".[23] 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.[24]
Collaborative releases
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.[25]
Other collaborative releases include Outdoor Museum of Fractals with Camilo Tirado, Three Live Takes with Houssam Gania and Holden's most recent output, Long Weekend with Wacław Zimpel.[26][27][28]
^"James Holden". Beat Factor. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2012. 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.((cite web)): CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
