The suite-est thing

If the last few years are anything to go by, David Holmes is as likely to be found hanging out with George Clooney in Vegas, as he is to be working with members of the Family Stone in LA, or hooking up with edgy street poets from downtown New York. Are you surprised then to hear that the first release from his new label 13 Amp comes from a bedroom in Newtownabbey? Well, if you know anything about Gary Irwin – the studio whiz behind The Vendetta Suite – then you shouldn’t be. The only shock is that it’s taken him so long to get to this stage.

“I’m a veteran,” smirks Gary. “A 28-year-old veteran.”

Utter the name SugarSweet in certain circles in Belfast and watch eyes go moist, faces light up, and jaws start chewing. Colonising The Art College in the early ’90s, it’s the club that got closest to embodying the peerless collision of artfulness and mayhem that Holmes and partner Iain McCready used to revolutionise Northern Irish dance music. A teenager at the time, Gary may not have been one of the first batch of enrolees, but that didn’t prevent him from enjoying a swift graduation.

“I used to listen to Acid House music on my walkman but not go to clubs,” he says. “Then, in about 1990, I went down to The Art College with a few mates and that was that. It just gave me the push to make my own music. Anytime I made any money I was buying bits of equipment and I just kinda built up my own wee studio. I’d a half decent keyboard and made up a few tapes and one night brought some up to SugerSweet. I gave one to McCreadey, one to Andy Weatherall and one to Homer.

“A month later, Homer gives me a ring and asks me if I’d like to come down to his studio and help him engineer. I was studying music at Bangor Tech at the time, so when someone you really look up to asks you to help out, you have to do it. It was intimidating at first cos I was kinda in awe of him a wee bit and didn’t really know him that well, and on top of that you’d the likes of Ashley Beadle and Keith Tenniswood coming over, but eventually, you just get into it. It was great.

Gary performed engineering duties on large chunks of both This Film’s Crap Let’s Slash The Seats and Let’s Get Killed – intermittingly thrilling records that saw Holmes attempt to transcend his techno background and lay the foundations for his future wide-screen jazzmatazz.

When Holmes relocated to America for Bow Down To The Exit Sign, though, Gary stayed behind (“He went his way, I went mine. Dead amicable, like. It was just a very natural thing”) and slowly began to work on his own material.

The first results of which can at last be heard in the ‘Mercurial’/’Hula Bop’ single that has been chosen to launch the 13 Amp enterprise. And, judging by the array of thrills it has to offer, if Gary Irwin shares one trait with his former partner in crime, it’s his predilection for musical bed-hopping – neither tune knows how to sit still, veering from pounding Suicide-like electro to jangly, Tex-Mex lullaby without breaking sweat. All a long way from his House origins.

“I just stopped making dance music and it seemed really natural. I was listening to lots of different types of music. Sonic Youth and what have you. The kind of stuff my mates used to listen to when I was younger and lost in an ecstasy haze. But I’m also into the usual stuff – Spector, The Velvet Underground.

“There’s still people out there raving their bollocks off every weekend, but I don’t know how they do it. There’s still ones knocking around from when I first started, and you can’t half tell by looking at them.”

13 Amp have made known their desire to champion 7 inch “low-key, off-the-wall pop singles”, according to Gary. With the mighty ‘Mercurial’ (sung by Cara Robinson), The Vendetta Suite have thrown down an impressive bench-mark for those planning to take up the challenge. Gary, though, has yet to decide if he will be one of them.

“The contracts are for one-off releases, and to be honest, that’s all right with me. I’d even be happy enough knocking out different singles under different names. Homer’s talking about me putting out a full album but I’ll have to wait and see.”

Maybe you could get him to engineer.

“Homer engineering?” he laughs. “No fucking chance. Why do you think he employs people to do it for him?”

Suite.