At home in his native Ireland, batting off a wasp and placating his young daughter while we chat about his life and work, it's clear that it'll take more than a Hollywood A-lister to turn this Belfast boy's head.

Listen to his new album, Holy Pictures, and you realise that family is everything to him. "Lots of things inform the album," he says. "My wife, my daughter, my immediate family, lost friends and my whole history with Belfast."

Indeed the personal nature of it goes some way to explaining why Holmes never intends to make the heady leap over the pond to LA. He has always skirted on the periphery of fame.

One of 10 children, the DJ and composer discovered his love of music early in life. By the age of 15 he was spinning tunes in local pubs and went on to run his own clubs. Ten years later his life changed when his ambient sounds caught the ear of Hollywood.

"I can still remember getting the call from Danny DeVito's people at Jersey Films asking me to do the score for Out Of Sight," he recalls. "I remember thinking, 'You cannot make a plan for life. You just have to make decisions when the plan finds you.'"

High-profile collaborations with Steven Soderbergh on the Ocean's Eleven trilogy followed, and ever since it seems the money men can't get enough of him. He was recently signed up by Apple for their iPhone ad campaign, for which Holmes will pen the score, Robert Downey Jnr will star and David Fincher direct. "I guess they must have seen something in the whole Oceans' thing that they liked," says Holmes.

He is more keen to talk about his latest album and forthcoming gig in Edinburgh. The record was inspired by the recent death of his father. "This album is very close to home. There was a starting point when I lost my mother but then when I lost my father last year I really started writing."

He has no intention of leaving his home country. "There are three very good reasons I'll never move out of Ireland: family, friends and my music," he says. "The great thing about Belfast is it never lets you lose perspective. I've been doing DJ sets here since I was 15 and in some ways nothing's changed."

This is not to say that Holmes doesn't get starstruck: "It has happened," he admits. "It was around the time of the Ocean films. I was in LA and walked into the studio where Ray Charles did 'I Can't Stop Loving You' to lay down the tracks for Ocean's Eleven. I looked around and there was Elvis's harmonica player and Frank Zappa's trombone player, and they are all waiting to hear what I have to say. I remember thinking, 'Bloody hell, this is what people dream of.'"

As much as he enjoys the film work, he can't imagine not DJing: "I love a Scottish crowd," he says. "It must be the Celtic connection, but there's just an energy there that means I'll keep coming back as long as people want me."

The Irish/Scottish connection will blossom over the forthcoming year when he pens the score for Alan Warner's tome The Man Who Walks, a project still in its early stages. Irvine Welsh will direct and Billy Connolly will reportedly star.

It was one job that he could not resist. "Irvine called me up and asked me to do it and I jumped at it," he says. "I'm really excited about this one. The way I see it is as long as I don't feel like I'm selling my soul to the devil in this business, I'll enjoy it." v

The Holy Pictures is out now; David Holmes' album launch, September 12, Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh