Photek: Classic or Dud?

photek = sort of underrated at this point. remember, for a while he was pretty much the only person not using a palette of straight amen and think breaks.

pale scrawny white guys are always always always classic

Hahaha this might be why people aren't holding him in higher esteem.

I think the main reason was that he came off as so dry and serious.

I don't remember "Relics", but "Presha III" and "Jump (MK2)" are both pretty good.

Goldie's best moments often = Rob Playford's best moments. Whereas Photek's best moments = Rupert Parkes imagination.

Yeah yeah yeah and it's all Nico Sykes too and blah blah blah. Maybe Rupert might have benefited from an engineer.

wrong and insane

A lot of his stuff is fantastic though, yeah. I'd say his golden period was '95-'96 - ie. the golden age of the "Metalheadz" sound but just before Modus Operandi.

nothng but piles of asian drums on top of one another. nothing to do but twitch like a jellyfish on a butcher block

wow, probably the truest thing i ever said on ilm

some dude called "the law" assembled this all photek 93-97 mix. makes a pretty damn good case for photek's brilliance.

01.. Photek - Third Sequence - Astralwerks [1996]
02.. Studio Pressure - Jump Mk II - Certificate 18 [1993]
03.. Goldie - Still Life (Photek Remix) - Razors Edge [1995]
04.. Studio Pressure - First Sequence - Photek [1994]
05.. The Truper - Vol 1 A - Street Beats [1994]
06.. System X - Mind Games (Dub Mix) - Entity [1994]
07.. Photek - Consciousness - Metalheadz - [1994]
08.. Photek - The Hidden Camera (Static Mix) - Science [1996]
09.. Photek - Ni Ten Ichi Ryu - Science [1997]
10.. Studio Pressure - The Water Margin - Photek - [1995]
11.. Photek - One Nation - Sanctury [1997/2007]
12.. Phaze 1 - Natural - Timeless [1995]
13.. Aquarius - Drift To The Centre - Looking Good [1995]
14.. Code Of Practice - Infiltrate - Certificate 18[1995]
15.. The Truper - Vol 2 B - Street Beats [1994]
16.. The Sentinel - Pulse Of Life - Basement[1994]
17.. Therapy? - Loose (Photek Remix) - A&M [1995]
18.. EZ Rollers - Rolled Into One (Photek Remix) - Moving Shadow [1996]
19.. Everything But The Girl - Single (Photek Remix) - Virgin [1996]
20.. Photek - Rings Around Saturn - Photek [1996]

go geddit here: http://drumandbassmixes.com/thelaw.htm

is burial the new photek?

yes ... sort of

photek >>> burial

he's a little bit bigger relative to the scene than photek was, and he's more "outside" the scene too

i want to say he's the new squarepusher but squarepusher was actively adversarial w/ drum and bass, whereas burial likes dubstep & 2-step, he's not trying to tear it down w/ something new.

and again, i think he crossed over more than squarepusher did. squarepusher probably sold less albums than goldie.

Rhythm & Sound ^ (Hyperdub + Skull Disco) * (2008 / 1996) = (Metalheadz + Photek Productions) ^ Basic Channel

thanks to this thread revive i went on a search for my copy of "something else...the bleeps tune" and i can't find it. i wanted to hear it again before coming onto this thread to proclaim its greatness.

that equation is breaking my brane

2008/1996 = breaks?

mind, one of my favorite things about 2008 is the return of breaks in non-traditionally steppy musics

Maybe... I was just writing gibberish really. Try listening to T-Raenon if you've got a headache. Hearing that for the first time, while reading an interview with him, where he mentioned that Black Dog's Bytes was his favourite record, made me a fan forever.

yeah the vibe of bytes is pretty much untouchable.

i think a digital music player needs to be invented where you can just drop in equations like that and then it plays them for you.

i'm going to echo mr dan perry from upthread and point out that BDP and detroit techno refs made a lot of people dislike him!

gibberish or not it is quite appropriate on a photek thread. mr science of breaks himself.

why would that make people dislike him?

i dunno. ask a british.

I don't think the Artificial Intelligence and Drum'n'Bass lot mixed that much at the time, though I don't remember there being any animosity there. Anyway I got into both via the lowly NME so I'm not well-qualified to cover this...

i dunno why the dislike either, other than part of the pre-existing sniffiness re "intelligent" tag

^^ this used to be a big deal! 300-post threads and stuff.

Pretty sure most of the backlash was Reynolds' inspired and I think he was mostly sniffy that Photek seemed so desirous to distance himself from jungle and instead align himself with detroit techno. Plus (at the time) he considered Photek's brand of d'n'b kind of dull compared to ragga/jump-up/what not. No doubt like everything else he's changed his mind half-a-dozen times since.

las time we did this i rolled out the reynolds line and got schooled: 'pparently early photek is pretty jump-up-ish.

im wondering how reynolds will treat post-1998 developments in 'energy flash 2: the blog years', because this argument over 'intelligence' has sort of gone away.

i haven't felt like listening to Solaris since it came out

I only played it because I remember the overall reaction to it being similar to the backlash reaction to RAM; unsurprisingly I am enjoying it a lot more than RAM so maybe I'll be in the mood to really dig that album in 2026

Why did you check it out (at the time and now) Dan I thought you disliked Photek?

What? I loved Photek up until Solaris came out; I bought "The Hidden Camera", "Ni-Ten-Ichi-Ryu", Modus Operandi and Form and Function when they were released. I think you are confusing me with someone else?

i dug it out, it's better than i remembered. it's weirdly all over the place tho.

the main reason I was not into Solaris was because I was so into the doomy drum n bass stuff he'd been doing before and was not at all in the mood to hear his take on loungy progressive house music

Okay must be confusing you with someone else from back in the old days.

i've still never heard this because i loooooved photek and haaaaated house music at the time.

I haven't talked about Photek all that much here, I admit, but I am pretty sure he was among the names I would regularly drop on a.m.a as someone I loved (I'm sure I talked about Squarepusher more, though)

Yeah one of the old regulars used to complain that i'd put them onto Photek with a description that sounded more exciting than the music actually was and I was like I mostly preferred Source Direct anyway.

haha OTM re: Source Direct

oh wow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyKuzY52hWU&feature=player_detailpage&list=PLUdmMccuxH2HJrCrFvMUa6g2VlyPvOpTI

Brilliant! He's such a lad/geezer/geek.

Never really stopped listening to KJZ and Mine to give since they came out, 17 and 13 years ago. Wowsers!

Really wish there was a 10 minute version of the track Solaris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1MoazXFNM

I think my favourite Photek aliases are Studio Pressure for the smoother stuff and Truper for the all-out layered chopped Amen/Helicopter assaults.

fitting that the Photek doc clip there starts out like a car commercial

"Knightvision" aside (it's just okay in a moody 1998 2-step dancing thinkpiece kind of way) the "originals" half of Form & Function is pretty much unf***withable, amirite?

Esp the "Rings of Saturn" --> "The Water Margin" --> "UFO" final victory lap stretch.

yes sir

tho i pretty much love all of F&F tbh

Oh yeah the remixes are mostly fantastic too.

I was just thinking in the context of the discussion upthread, if someone wanted to "get" Photek, listening to the back half of Form & Function would be a much better option than listening to Modus Operandi (though I like MO too).

yes, forever. F&F was the only Photek record i owned and i listened to it to death. still sounds amazing.

was just bumping MO like 30 mins ago

watch straight ahead off my flashlight ... there it is again

watch straight ahead off my flashlight ... there it is again

Classic. If for that alone. It spookily moves me ,everytime

THIS TUNE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAZmerb5gS4

Should get around to a Photek POX.

Tentatively scribbled this ten down a while back.

Aquarius - Drift To The Centre
Studio Pressure - The Water Margin
Photek - Complex
The Sentinel - TouléPleu
The Truper - Volume 3 B
Photek - Rings Around Saturn
Photek - The Hidden Camera
Photek - UFO
Aquarius & Tayla - Soul Searching
Photek - Consciousness

God how I love Photek

If I hadn't seen the record with my own eyes I'd have thought this was a joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3AVoBbzMsw

Going back to Form & Function, this is still *the* Photek album for me. I got it on cd from Best Buy in high school, I don't know if I had somehow heard of him or was looking for drum & bass albums and chanced upon it. Still sounds incredible.

Really enjoyed Philip Sherburne's Modus Operandi revisit, and going back to that record:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/photek-modus-operandi/

Also I'm finally old enough to appreciate Solaris, especially if I just think of it as some house record. The blown-out quality of the kicks and basses is nice, and the dubbiness.

I just rediscovered his 2012 DJ Kicks mix , so nice

ooh, sounds like a good listen for the commute home

Pitchfork piece was great. There’s a lot of electronic music from the mid/late 90s that I loved desperately at the time. These days a lot of it feels… of its time. I don’t want to say they’ve aged poorly but I just can’t separate them from their era (Squarepusher, u-Ziq, Bukem, Roni Size and others). All these years later this particular Photek album still captivates me. I always put it on when I really need to get into a state of intense focus (i.e. writing to deadline).