hypersongs

Source Direct

The St Albans drum and bass duo, whose 1995 and 1996 singles "Snake Style" and "Black Rose" became staples of the Metalheadz and Blue Note era.

St Albans

Source Direct is a drum and bass and jungle act from St Albans, made up of James Baker, a bedroom DJ, and Phil Aslett, a school friend who joined while still at secondary school. Baker knew Photek, Rupert Parkes, who was also from St Albans, through Parkes's sister at school, and Photek helped them get a deal with Certificate 18 under their original production name, Sounds of Life, which they used when they were about fifteen. Baker trained on a sound engineer course at City of Westminster College, early tracks were made at Panic Studios in London, and Sounds of Life recorded two sessions for John Peel. Their aliases include Intensity, Oblivion, Mirage, X-Files and Hokusai.

The first single, "Future London" with "Shimmer" on Odysee, came in 1994. In 1995 came "A Made Up Sound" with "The Cult" (their first on Metalheadz), "Approach & Identify", "Fabric of Space" and "Snake Style" with "Exit 9" on their own Source Direct Recordings. In 1996 they released "Black Rose" with "12 Til 4", "The Crane" with "Artificial Barriers", "Stonekiller" with "Web of Sin" on Metalheadz and "Secret Liaison" on Good Looking.

Virgin and the return

In 1997 Virgin issued the singles "Call & Response", "Capital D" and "Two Masks", and the US and Japan compilation Controlled Developments (Astralwerks and Science), which Fact called the best long-form document of Source Direct's music. Exorcise the Demons (March 1999, Virgin and Astralwerks, 73:56) followed, with "Call & Response", "Mind Weaver", "Haunted", "Technical Warfare", "Capital D" and others; Christgau gave an A-minus, AllMusic four and a half stars, and Fact ranked it 96th of the best albums of the 1990s. "Call & Response" was used in the film Blade, though not on the soundtrack, and "2097" is on the Wipeout 2097 soundtrack.

The duo split around the end of the decade; when is disputed. The Quietus says 2000, Drumtrip puts Aslett's departure around 1998, and Wikipedia says solo after Exorcise the Demons. Baker told Drumtrip that Aslett withdrew about 48 hours before a three-week US tour arranged by Virgin and Astralwerks, and that the split cost him the Virgin deal. He returned in 2014, encouraged by Alex Green (Boddika), who ran Nonplus; its 12-inch series paired classic tracks with remixes from 2015, "Approach & Identify" with Demdike Stare and "Black Rose" with Blawan, the first digital releases of the originals. Aslett later ran Vampire Records as Phil Source.

Albums

Songs

  • Snake Style Snake Style / Exit 9 · 1995

    The 1995 A-side built on a James Brown break and martial-arts samples.

  • Black Rose Black Rose / 12 Til 4 · 1996

    A 1996 side of dissonant analog chords and screeching samples, reissued in 2015 with a Blawan remix.

Sources

  1. Source Direct, Wikipedia
  2. The essential Source Direct, Fact (2012-10-05)
  3. Source Direct interview with Jim Baker, The Quietus
  4. Whatever happened to Source Direct, part 2, Drumtrip