David Holmes: Bow Down to the Exit Sign : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

David Holmes, who might have become the Lalo Schifrin of electronica after composing the score for Out of Sight, is nothing if not ambitious. For Bow Down, his fourth U.S. album in three years, he inserts noirish, cinematic dialogue in between tracks of dirty techno rock, as if he were trying to rewrite the role of the studio auteur. The tracks, from tape-loop atmospheric collages like "Bad Thing," which features vocals by Jon Spencer, to loopy, Miles-blistered jazz fusion like "Incite a Riot," are less trip-hop than synthetic, sloppy reconstructed funk. Like Death in Vegas, Holmes is a techno boffin whose work builds upon that of the Velvet Underground rather than Kraftwerk; too bad his grooves, like the bass-line chug of "Living Room," often go nowhere fast. Holmes may have rewritten the formula for art rock, but, unfortunately, Bow Down is richer in texture than in tunes. (RS 851)

PAT BLASHILL