Sound on a shared wavelength

The Belfast DJ David Holmes has just finished his second collaboration with the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, the soundtrack to Ocean's 11. Peter Crawley talks to a man in demand.

In a way, David Holmes has always made music for films; it just took a while for the films to catch up with him. The Belfast DJ, composer and producer has a flair for the visual, a nose for an idea and a drive towards concept. Since he first appeared, in 1995, Holmes has continually taken inspiration from films; soundtracks form a huge part of his record collection and he counts Ennio Morricone as a big influence.

Now he has four film scores to his name, including a second collaboration with the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, in which Holmes has used his eclectic musical tastes and dance sensibilities to challenge a medium known for grandiose string arrangements and sweeping orchestral themes. In hindsight, the title of his atmospheric debut album was an anarchic statement of intent: This Films Crap Lets Slash the Seats.

Today, however, he seems more humble. "I never thought in a million years that I'd be scoring movies at this level," he says. "I got a real good opportunity, when I did Out Of Sight, to make an impression and to work on something with great substance. I think it's a great film. The more the years pass, the better it becomes."

Holmes's first soundtrack commission was for Supply And Demand, a Lynda La Plante television thriller. Next came Resurrection Man, Mark Evans's dark Belfast-set film, which caught Soderbergh's attention. In 1998, Holmes worked with the director on his impossibly stylish adaptation of Out Of Sight, an Elmore Leonard novel.

Soderbergh is an artist's director. From his debut in 1989, with the Palme d'Or-winning Sex, Lies, And Videotape, to last year's Oscar-grabbing Traffic, he has become one of the most sought-after film-makers in Hollywood. Since he dedicated his best-director Oscar to "anyone who spends part of their day creating", you imagine his popularity among artists is probably off the chart.

"He's an amazing man to work with," says Holmes. "He treats you like an artist. He listens to what you have to say and he's also very articulate when it comes to pointing out little subtleties that we might have missed in the arrangement."

Unusually for such a high-profile project, Holmes experienced little pressure when composing and recording his music. "There was just a real strong level of trust. With Ocean's 11 I didn't have any pressure on me whatsoever. It was just a really joyful experience. Soderbergh is an artist himself and he lets people express themselves freely, without him standing over their shoulder or being a control freak. He chooses you to do a job because he thinks you're the right man for the job."

In this case, however, Holmes had to apply for the job. It was what he describes as his brass neck that landed him the gig, rather than his relationship with Soderbergh. Alerted by a notice in a paper to the planned remake of the Rat Pack caper, from 1960, Holmes phoned the director.

"I told him I really wanted to do it," Holmes says. "He said he was thinking about asking me anyway." After reading the script, Holmes decided he wanted to be as involved in the music as possible, not only as composer but also in choosing which songs would feature in the film.

"I started sending him things like the Elvis Presley track A Little Less Conversation and Handsome Boy Modeling School's The Projects," he says. Holmes then spent 18 months sourcing tracks before stepping inside a studio. Rather than indicate how extensive the DJ's record collection is, this painstaking process gives some insight into how Holmes approaches composing. "When you're sourcing tracks they normally lead to ideas anyway. Once you've actually nailed the source music, the score makes itself," he says.

The forgotten Presley song proved influential. "It's more funky than it is rock 'n' roll," he says, approvingly. "When that track was made it was definitely ahead of the pack in how it sounds. It has a real contemporary quality to it, even though it was made 35 years ago."

Listening to Holmes speak of his decisions on including certain songs in the soundtrack, you understand the mindset of a composer informed as much by electronic sampling as by cinematic atmosphere. Holmes doesn't believe that either A Little Less Conversation or The Projects naturally fit the context of the film, but he understands that at least 30 seconds of each will serve the film's purpose without attracting undue attention. They're quotes, out of context, appropriated for the moment.

If his DJ nous informs this mix-album approach to the soundtrack, then Holmes's producer credentials allow him to complement Soderbergh's time-skewing editing techniques. Holmes describes a scene in Ocean's 11, involving Matt Damon's pickpocket in action, where the hand isn't quicker than the camera eye.

"The way Soderbergh has edited the picture, there's a triple freeze-frame. So the music has to do a stop, a jump and a skip. Then it's back into the groove again," he says. For a producer who has remixed U2 and Manic Street Preachers, among others, his use of dance-music techniques dovetails with the unconventional editing.

"You hear the punctuation in the music, so it's all about talking to the picture with the music to create that tension, drama or pace."

Holmes's soundtrack for the film is a joyous affair. It's a suitable accomplice for an old-fashioned crime caper that he mentions in the same breath as Kelly's Heroes, The Dirty Dozen and The Italian Job. Holmes's previous success in scoring for Soderbergh resulted in a deluge of film offers, most of which he declined. "I try my best not to get pigeonholed," he says, bluntly.

Is there a danger of falling into that trap with another stylish Soderbergh heist movie? "If people ring me up and ask me to do what I did in Ocean's 11, I just say no. It's pointless for me. I think I turned down over 60 films since Out Of Sight. I want to diversify and be as versatile as possible," he says.

For his next Hollywood commitment, Holmes will be reunited with George Clooney (also in Ocean's 11), who is directing Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, a biopic of the game-show supremo and alleged hitman Chuck Barris. For the moment, however, Holmes is relieved to have some time off from films. "If you're doing a film, at the end of the day it's the director's baby and you can never forget that."

He quickly adds: "I do love collaborating with directors who put you in a completely different mindset. What you have to do is make music that suits someone else, but that you're totally happy with at the same time."

He admits that for the usually autonomous DJ-producer, collaborating can sometimes be difficult. "I've been very lucky up until now. I can imagine if you were working on a film and [it went wrong], it would be a nightmare. That's why I'm really careful about which films I do . . . I would hate to be in the position where I'm making music that I don't really believe in. I just try to work really hard on every job that I do and make it the best I can. I think if you constantly do that, you never have to worry about your next job."

• Ocean's 11 opens on February 15th