James Holden (producer)


James Alexander Goodale Holden 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.
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Early career

Holden grew up in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, and was first introduced to electronic music by a physics teacher at school. Holden studied mathematics at Oxford University.
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. 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.
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 and worked with singer Julie Thompson as Holden & Thompson. His remix credits for this period include artists such as Madonna, Britney Spears, Depeche Mode, New Order, Nathan Fake and Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid. In April 2006, his mix album James Holden At The Controls was Mixmags 'Album of the Month'.

Border Community

Holden's label Border Community was founded in 2003, and made its debut with Holden's single 'A Break in the Clouds'. Border Community has gone on to kickstart the careers of many young artists, including Nathan Fake, Fairmont, Luke Abbott and The MFA. James Holden often performed alongside his labelmates at his Border Community label nights at Corsica Studios in London.
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'.
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.'

Live performance

In 2013, Holden released his second album The Inheritors, a "revealing and intriguing" album of "buzzy pastoral beauty and harsh rhythmic duress". After the record's release, Thom Yorke invited Holden to support Yorke's band Atoms for Peace on their US tour. These shows consisted of Holden performing on modular synth alongside drummer Tom Page. 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.
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. This array of musicians allowed Holden to create a β€œspiritual jazz band playing folk / trance music” whilst keeping his "ever strident synth... front and centre". 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.

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.
Other collaborative releases include Outdoor Museum of Fractals with Camilo Tirado, Three Live Takes with Houssam Gania and Long Weekend with WacΕ‚aw Zimpel.

Discography

Albums

Collaborations

Singles

  • "Horizons"
  • "One For You"
  • "Solstice/I Have Put Out the Light"
  • Holden & Thompson – "Nothing" – UK #51
  • "A Break in the Clouds"
  • Holden & Thompson – "Come To Me"
  • Milky Globe & James Holden – "Sun Spots"
  • James Holden – "The Wheel"
  • "Renata"

Remixes

  • 3 Phase feat. Dr. Motte – "Der Klang Der Familie"
  • Aaron-Carl – "Dance Naked"
  • Accadia – "Into the Dawn"
  • AndrΓ© Kraml – "Safari"
  • Avus – "Fancy Arse"
  • Black Strobe – "Nazi Trance Fuck Off"
  • Blue Amazon – "Breathe"
  • Blu Peter – "Funky Suite"
  • Britney Spears – "Breathe on Me"
  • Britney Spears – "Breathe on Me"
  • Caribou – "Bowls"
  • The Coffee Boys – "The Touch"
  • Depeche Mode – "The Darkest Star"
  • Dextro – "Do You Need Help"
  • Electrique Boutique – "Revelation"
  • Joshua Ryan – "Pistolwhip"
  • Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid – "The Sun Never Sets"
  • Kirsty Hawkshaw – "Fine Day"
  • Loki – "NYC Underground"
  • Madonna – "Get Together"
  • Meerkat – "Colours"
  • Mercury Rev – "Senses On Fire"
  • Mogwai – "The Sun Smells Too Loud"
  • Misstress Barbara – "Barcelona"
  • Misstress Barbara – "Barcelona"
  • Nathan Fake – "The Sky Was Pink"
  • Nathan Fake – "The Sky Was Pink"
  • New Order – "Someone Like You"
  • Radiohead – "Reckoner"
  • Roland Klinkenberg – "Inner Laugh"
  • Solid Sessions – "Janeiro"
  • System 7 – "Planet 7"
  • Timo Maas presents Mad Dogs – "Better Make Room"
  • Ultra Violet – "Heaven"
  • Watergate – "Heart of Asia"

Mix albums