14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding, August 24, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Modus Operandi (Audio CD)
I think I understand Photek's mindset. He has a deep appreciation for excellence, he wants perfection--he is a perfectionist. And he's really good at expressing this urge through music. When you use a computer to make music (I think he mentioned he uses cubase vst mainly), you have complete and total utter control over every aspect of sound, right down to the microsecond. It seems like every beat, every snare, bass drum or symbol is painstakingly constructed to come as close to perfection as possible, without sounding to overly robotic. Some people might say that this stuff does sound too mechanical or unemotional...it may seem like that at first, but when you really listen closely you actually notice that not every beat is precisely accurate. His beats are completely handcrafted, and you can start to tell after many careful listenings. That's what makes it so impressive. He puts so much time and effort into making these tracks that it's hard not to respect the man. I read that he spends about 5 weeks on average to complete just one track! This guy is like a ninja, a kung-fu master of the art of creating sonic excellence. Some of these tracks are simply exhillarating, you really can feel the emotion of the drums in some of these songs. Pure intensity, anger, tranquility, he can do every emotion with drums alone. The sonic textures to accompany these masterful beats only inhance the effect.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not your mothers d n' b...., August 23, 2000
This review is from: Modus Operandi (Audio CD)
I can understand why people rated Photek poorly. His work is cold and inhuman-- more focused on precision than melody. It's a tough listen: in many ways, its probably about as inaccessible as a popularly acessible drum n' bass or jungle album is. It's all about straight ahead beats. Melodies become minimal: this is the cold blade of drum and bass with the fluff thrown away...
It's not your grandmothers Oldsmobile either. It's not comfortable and it sounds awfully spartan for the first one.... er... twenty listens. To listen to it you have to think soberly. To analyze. Even with Amon Tobin (who does some really tight work) there is a margin for error as a listener provided by the padding of sampling.... a buffer zone.... whereas here, this record bleeds into your subconcious... tribally... like 'jungle' should....
This is Photek's best record although some of his remixes, etc. are pretty hard to beat. This, along with Vibert's (Plug) "Drum and Bass for Papa" and Tobin, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher's work is about as far-out as stuff gets.....
But that stuff is better if you don't know what you're getting into. This is like the eighteen year old double malt of electronic composition.....
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some of the most technically proficient D'n'b out there....., February 9, 2005
This review is from: Modus Operandi (Audio CD)
Does Drum 'N' Bass need to be 'Danceable' to be considered good Drum 'N' Bass???....if the answer is "Yes", than you'll need to pass on this CD, and head for one of the Drum 'N' Bass producers known for remarkably dancefloor friendly music. Because Photek (aka "Rupert Parkes"), although having recorded Drum 'n Bass for many years (also under a few aliases), Photek makes the sort of Drum 'N' Bass, that would be incredibly hard to sell to those that like listen to their Drum 'n' Bass in both the home and in the Club. Hardly surprising as Photek rarely DJ's, and is more a producer than musician.
You know when you have the sort of sublime Drum 'n Bass that is catchy, melodic, has a great sense of rhythm and has that tremendous build-up before giving you the central/chorus rhythm, or has superb use of Vocals or Mc'ing???. Well forget all of that, because this has absolutely none of that. Doesn't sound so promising so far does it??? but what Photek does have on his side is a level of intricate Drum/Rhythm programming, that really is second to none.....(apparently needing several weeks of computer preparation, just to put one track together), and tightly focused sounds and sound effect manipulation that gives his sound that distinctly menacing, Paranoid & anxious effect. Forget about guest female vocalists singing beautifully over samba/Latin breakbeat's, or funky Drum 'n' Bass beats mixed with up-tempo Jazz. Photek deals in the dark end of Drum 'n' Bass, and more specifically the 'Home listening' end of D'n'B, because you'll be hard pressed to find many people willing to try dancing to this in a traditional D'n'B club.
Think sci-fi strings, and skittering beats, that wouldn't sound out of place, if someone like "Aphex Twin" or "Squarepusher" were drafted in to create a minimalist, industrial-styled drum 'N' Bass, but without the weird & wonderful twists & Turns that their music is known for. It's a strangely Cold sound and with the music taking the form of thrumming bass, sweeping synths, bell tones and hyperkinetic drum patterns swirl together, forming a mysterious mood, that is as much keeping with electronica as it is D'n'B, and the feeling is a weirdly detached, synthetic sound, not unlike more aggressively paced ambient techno track. (think "Autechre" handling moody breakbeat)
This is music designed almost exclusively for listening to at home, because such is the overridingly dense and claustrophobic nature of his music, and the fiercely complex nature of his drum patterns, and minimalist approach to arrangement (almost unlike anything else out there), this is what, I would refer to as 'Mood Music', insofar as it's not generally something that'll have wide/accessible appeal, but those entering into this with the right frame of mind/ or under the right circumstances will (hopefully) all see what all the fuss is about.
Each track works to a very similar brief....bleak, nervous & unapologetically dark Metallic drum programming, and it's clinical Eerie industrial sounding take on underground jungle make this hard going for most, and the lack of distinctive song structures also threaten to make some tracks blur into the next. But this isn't an album that intends to impress on its first couple of listens.....no, multiple listens are required, and because of the density of the music, listening to the album in segments (several tracks at a time), will give a better appreciation of it's tightly interwoven arrangements that over the course of multiple listens really do begin to reveal exactly, that beneath the seemingly understated bassline, off-kilter snares and offsetting synth, lurks meticulous attention to detail, that some lesser skilled producers couldn't possibly hope to emulate.
subdued beats, give way to ominous cymbals and pattering snares, and the frequently rumblingly abrasive beat, works beautifully with the more tense and clinical sounding percussion effects. And again, it must be mentioned, that if the listener isn't prepared to really sink their teeth into this album, then the meticulously crafted tracks, the subtle use of Hi-hat, and LTJ Bukem styled synth's, layered over effects on tracks that all run at over 6 minutes, will have long outstayed their welcome, well after 3 minutes. As this is music that is much about technicality as it is musical expression.
If your the sort of person that is a little freeform with their music and doesn't mind / or applauds people attempting to do things a little differently with their music, or like musicians / producers that refuse to allow themselves to be confined to genre limitations, or do you find that you like the more 'leftfield' approach in the music that you listen to?? Then this is possibly the sort of album that may well interest you. The fact is that you might not even like this the first couple of times you hear it. I first heard Photek via a couple of remixes he did for other artists, and I thought "Nice...not bad", heard some of his own work, and thought "Hmmm.....that's okay, maybe not something I'd buy", and it's only after hearing the odd Mp3 around friends or (*Coughs*) downloading a couple of tracks, that I'm now really sold on his style of music. This really is either 'Love it' or 'Hate it' music. And if going through the trouble of trying to appreciate his music sounds like "Too much effort", then I suggest you give this a miss. But those that are prepared to stick with this 'Dance-unfriendly' Drum 'N' Bass, will (eventually) some of the most abstract and technically proficient Drum 'n' Bass/Electronica out there.
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