Midwest Techno Originals

The Sabres Of Paradise - Smokebelch II (David Holmes Mix) (1993)

I was a little hesitant to post this at first because I had a hard time connecting this track to Midwest Techno. After some thought, I decided it’s going up because I played this so damn much and it became so popular that people made up their own name for it.

David Holmes is an Irish native musician who has been producing music for about 20 years now. His accomplishments include a number of film scores including music for Out Of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven, The Good German, and most recently, The Girlfriend Experience starring one of my favorite porn actresses, Sasha Grey. David Holmes currently has 10 full length albums under his belt since 1995 including one of my favorites Let’s Get Killed which highlighted random people talking in the streets of New York. Some of the bands he has remixed include U2, Doves, Primal Scream and Ice Cube. Smokebelch II (David Holmes Remix) is one of his earlier remixes of a track made by a short lived UK electronic group called The Sabres Of Paradise who made a small splash in the Ambient/Downtempo world of electronic music in the UK during the mid nineties.

This track was caned by yours truly at probably three quarters of the parties I DJ’ed in 1993-95 (sometimes I DJ’ed 2 parties a week). Not because I loved it so much but because so many ravers begged me to play it, referring to it as The Pretty Piano Song. I have no idea who started to call it that but people I know still call it that to this day. It took a long time for people to figure out what this track was actually called and a few DJ’s played the original beat-less version but David Holmes’ Remix is the cut. It was hard not to play this almost 15 minute length track in it’s entirety because it made such an impact on the dance floor as I mixed in and out of it. People would notice the bells as the track was being mixed in and they would immediately lose their shit, possibly due to the the X or LSD they were on. Then, just as the piano starts to get annoying, the track pauses then launches into an acidic onslaught which in 1994 was an extremely popular music style when it came to raves in the midwest. Needless to say, there was also plenty of time to mix out of this track. Almost every time I played it, I mixed out of it easily with a long mix of Plastikman’s Spastik, which, as you should know, is another Midwest Techno Original.