February / March 1999

The Rob Lo fidelity experience...
Rob Lo reviews the Source Direct album Exorcise The Demons.

Source Direct - 'Exorcise The Demons' (Science)

Some records are best left unheard. Well, most records are best left unheard, but this one, especially, sounded so much better until I heard it, because the title is great, the St Albans duo's track record is impressive, and, as with all fantastical dream achievements (or train journeys to holiday locations) the sensation of imagining what might be is always better than the eventual reality.

'Exorcise The Demons'...yes! - come on, boys, give me the sound of ritualistic encounters with the cloven-hoofed, horned beast (no, not a cow from the Hertfordshire countryside), the Devil in the soul of humankind, the anti-Christ, the evil spirit in the machine! I want to hear you doing battle with the prince of darkness, regaining possession of your technological hearts and minds and driving Satan out - OUT, SATAN, OUT! YOU CAME DISGUISED AS GARY NUMAN BUT WE HAVE UNMASKED YOU AND ORDER YOU TO RETURN TO HELL!! And if you can't do that, then at least give me drum'n'bass which sounds like the soundtrack to a movie which re-situates several Edgar Allan Poe stories in the year 3000, scripted by William Gibson. No? No...

OK, this isn't a bad album, but since when has that been enough? Whether you regard it as being more, i.e., good, or very good, depends on many things. Like, how many d&b records you've heard, how high your standards are, and your degree of expectation. Are you a fan-type who snuffles up anything by your chosen subjects of desire, regardless of quality? These things shape the opinions of all of us, of course (substituting 'd&b' for whatever, naturally). Counting the previously heard 'Capital D' and 'Call And Response', the good outweighs the not-so-good, overall. Those of us who snapped up the one-sided promo, 'Mind Weaver', which appeared a while back, will count that as known material too, which leaves six truly 'fresh' tracks to judge.

'Haunted', like the album title, fails to live up to it's name, amounting to little more than a stab at minimalist 'tech-funk', with a whistle effect which makes me think that I am being haunted, by Thomas The Tank Engine. 'Love And Hate' (title inspired by the tattoos on Bob Mitchum's preacher in 'The Night of the Hunter'?) has an awful synth sound which puts me in a place of imaginary horror, true, but it's an Erasure sound-check, not 'Eraserhead', the movie.

Things improve with 'Dubstar', but even that's marred by the use of old-school video game sound effects, grafted onto what would otherwise be one of the best rhythms they've ever constructed - a tight, bassfunk-powered groove with unconventional breaks. But the breaks, throughout, form a major source of disappointment. D&b producers, in general, seem to have taken American scientist, Paul Ehrlich too literally when he said 'The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts' - these guys have saved all the 'parts' when, really, by now, they should have acquired a few new ones. Common breaks crop up frequently on this album, so it's a relief when, as on 'Wanton Conduct', they offer new, improved variations as evidence that all Virgin's money, and hours of studio time, were not completely wasted. Sadly, they're still using another part, the ol' 'Terminator'-style synth riff, as used by Goldie in the Dark age that was nearly ten years ago (!)

More surprisingly, after the cliched breaks, creative failures, and yes, high points, 'Concealed Identity' turns out to be no more than a replica of an old track, 'The Crane', kung-fu licks an' all. Is this really the state of d&b today? Are the best minds of the breakbeat science generation incapable of doing something better, something new, with the time and space they're given? Only on the standout track, 'Technical Warfare', do Source Direct truly deliver what their reputation promised - it oozes power, imagination and menace, enhanced by the driving cello sound. Otherwise, for whatever reasons (let's not discount either the curse of the major label deal, or creative inertia), 'Exorcise The Demons' fails to be as scary or smart as I'd hoped.

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