Music Review: Digicult - Out Of This World

Digicult is a fledging full-on psy act consisting of Bert De Becker & Davy Piessens, based in Ghent, Belgium, which seems to be hosting a lot of talent right now.

Dacru Records is one of my favourite at the moment; label boss De Becker, also known under his pseudonym "DJ Nemesis", and his co-founder Eskimo, (not to be confused with the son of John "Phantasm" Ford!), have a great ear for music. In particular the Orientation series CDs compiled by De Becker are quite good. The music on this label is by no means deep, but it's not cheesy either. It's music made for dancing and enjoying, not analysing.

With that in mind, step into the world of Digicult and see what they have to offer with their second album...

The first thing that struck me about the release was the artwork; fantastic! The image above doesn't quite do it justice. Inside the cover is no different, with a clever sketch of an audio waveform clearly saying "Out Of This World".

The title is apt because each and every song is themed around space, aliens, interstellar travel and the like, right from the cosmic tones of the opening, Star Travel, to the last track, The Return, featuring Fatali. While I admit a deep love for "themed" albums, I feel that this one went a bit over the top. Every track contains a copious amount of "space" vocal samples, with a vast majority being taken from American documentaries, the speakers clearly being geeky astrophysicists or the like. This I didn't enjoy at all. It's good for samples to have a certain mystery or strangeness surrounding them, and these satisfy neither criterion.

Also grating is the sheer over-usage of samples - every song has one. Like huge emotional breakdowns in epic trance, these feel like they are more there because they "had" to be rather than for actual artistic merit.

On the upside, most of the snippets seem relatively unique, though the nice female "we are now charging..." sample heard in Domestic's Limited Addiction rears it's head again. I'd be interested to know where this originally came from if anyone knows.

However, samples aside, this is a generally pleasing album.

It's more trance than psychedelic, with "rolling" bass lines being the only real link to the psychedelic scene. I think this is a good transition album for someone wanting to make the jump between the two.

The opening track has a distinct "cosmic" Euro feel to it, not unlike PPK - Resurrection (cringe!). However, rather than use a cheesy hook and weak percussion as PPK did, Digicult takes it up a notch, adding a delicious bass line, minimal hi-hats and loads of gorgeous melody in various forms; string plucks, synth stabs and raucous arps. It would be incorrect to call the album "formulaic", but all the tracks are cut from much the same stuff as this. The lead sounds are engaging, mostly eventuating in medium-intensity builds and bass drops, though it's clear that the producers are wary of making things too epic, and the energy is maintained right from start to finish as a result.

Some different flavours can be heard in tracks six and seven, my favourite two on the album, with Awaken The Dream having a faintly Indian feel to it in the second half, a nice nod to the roots of the genre and a great dancy track to boot.



Following this is Magic, which dedicated psy heads will no doubt hate with a passion, but which I think is pretty cool. Infected Mushroom have copped a lot of flak for trying to combine guitars with psy, and I think in some cases it's warranted, but Digicult have done a good job here in my opinion, using 80's style guitars that sound like they've been lifted from a sitcom's opening theme. Sounds horrible, I know, but listen to the sample to hear otherwise.




All in all, a nicely rounded album with perhaps lacks depth, but makes up for it with consistency and doesn't take itself too seriously. Digicult won't win any accolades for inventiveness or originality, but that doesn't mean this album isn't worth listening to. On the contrary, it's highly enjoyable if you can get your head past the annoying samples.