Photek: Classic or Dud?

Oh wait I might have bought a Bong-Ra album since either of those if that counts.

you didn't have to buy the album, the videos are on youtube

Haha silly me then.

i think mysteries of funk is a great album as is the prototype years (i have the version with the holographic cover, but not the double cd). i still buy calibre albums. i think the last two-step dnb cd/mix i bought from the late 90s was the stakka and skynet comp on audio blueprint and the matrix album. there's probably others i am forgetting.

Oh wait I bought that Digital Dubzilla record for $1 from the Tower sale.

:-o

>:-o

^^ revolted emoticon

@ bong-ra

Haha I like the EP collection of his that I bought, but the other albums are uh not so good (plus terrible terrible covers.)

I bought Fanu's album the other week. Still digesting it. Kinda Photek X Inperspective stuff.

Before that it was Kryptic Mindz & Leon Switch's album, which is 3/4 great, like Source Direct's Controlled Developmentsp X Lexis (there's also 1/4 typical 2-step tracks for the floor).

Planning to write a piece maybe on their alternate takes on breakbeat presha revivalism - it actually pretty cleanly plays out the Photek vs Source Direct HOW CLOSE WERE THEY REALLY?!? angle Vahid raises above.

NOT SO CLOSE AMIRITE

Um, the conflation is something like saying Russia and China have a common border, hence they're the same. I think there's a point of convergence, but yeah the core of their work is different. I'm only just picking this up now though. You're right re the relative rigidity of Source Direct, and I think this is part of the real value of techstep qua techstep - that joltiness, where the groove just seems to trip up and vault you forward and over things. Photek has this too though at times, but what is really clear with the contemporary breakage stuff is that you can have super-complex beats and still have quite a flat or smooth rhythmic sound, and I think Photek's work also shared that vibe at times as well. A lot of it's actually not to do with the beats but the relationship between the beats and the synth riffs and stuff like that. The best techstep is very blocky, not in the sense of being a single block but in the sense of the music sounding like an assemblage of blocks (the rhythm, keyboard riffs, the bass) all knocking into one another constantly.

So to put it this way: Photek was devoted to complexity not rigidity (but at times he was rigid); Source Direct were devoted to rigidity not complexity (but at times they were complex).

Back on topic, "Consciousness" is still one of the most amazing tracks ever. Imagine a whole album like that eh.

I still dispute the suggestion that Photek was way out on his own with his programming though (although his best work is very distinctive I'll grant you). That argument is a bit like people who say "oh my El-B (or Steve Gurley) beats were just so out there and revolutionary compared to the rest of 2-step garage", when in truth you're talking about first amongst (a lot of) equals status.

Not much to say here, but very gratified that this revival has been so popular. If only my Acen revival a month or so ago had proved to be so, sigh.

there's only one SD track i ever went mad for and that's 'Call And Response'. Hidden Agenda just as good if not quite as prolific (didn't get a deal with Virgin).

a point of convergence ... Photek was devoted to complexity not rigidity (but at times he was rigid); Source Direct were devoted to rigidity not complexity (but at times they were complex).

well said ... except i get hung up on the fact that, as you pointed out, there were many other producers you could rightly say were devoted to complexity. 4 hero and lemon D are two that immediately comes to mind, i'm sure there are lots of others we could figure out after five minutes of thought. and as far as rigidity goes, there's pretty much half the genre up there w/ source direct!!

so i wonder that when you say (although his best work is very distinctive I'll grant you we maybe haven't really yet got down to what it is that people were reacting to about photek and source direct, and that people *still* react to when they hear latter-day inperspective and reinforced tracks...

immediate smart-ass answer would be asian woodblocks and jazz hi-hats

Yeah Hidden Agenda! I'm not sure if either Photek or Source Direct ever topped "Dispatch #2".

Just listened to some of Modus Operandi again and I think it does have the joltiness I was implying it lacked upthread. Maybe what is notable about it though is how spare the programming is: very complex and precise, but Parkes wants you to hear every single snare. (x-post - maybe this is what you're looking for, Vahid - the individual drum sounds don't get lost in the blur of drums like they did in earlier jungle, or in mid-nineties Lemon D etc. But I think the breakage stuff is quite a bit about getting lost in the blur of the drums).

Also I think the Leon Switch/Kryptic Mindz album is in a similar ballpark (rather than allied with SD and Lexis against Photek as, again, I implied upthread).

The key maybe is that I forget how similar Lexis and Photek were - much more so than Photek and SD. Lexis also had that desire to shine a spotlight on each single drumsound. But I do like Lexis slightly more. Not sure why. He's hookier maybe? More melodramatic? Obv. he was following in Photek's footseps. This is a Lexis track ("Irrampent") I posted to another jungle thread a short while ago:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/87602446672097/

Something like Source Direct's "Enemy Lines" has a very different strategy to Photek: that very simple opening kick groove, the tick-tick hi-hats, that bassy synth riff on top of the flooding sub-audible dub bass, the throbbing wasp hum, and then (and this is U&K) the sudden rush of hyper-speed, hyper-complex metallic drums that almost sound like they're playing in anothe room (they also feel quite "high" in the mix - not loud, but actually high as in somewhere above your head). I love this track to death but the "groove" is about the interplay of different elements, whereas on Modus Operandi at least Photek is always keen to keep the drums really visible and clear - though I agree they would be better if they were mixed to sound louder vis a vis everything else.

("Enemy Lines" is quite unusual for a SD track though - this is the problem with generalising about how particular producers approach rhythm etc.)

the individual drum sounds don't get lost in the blur of drums like they did in earlier jungle

right!

so i just went out for an hour, went to the bookstore, picked up some groceries & drycleaning etc. and as i'm driving around town, decided to grab "metalheadz 2", stupid choice because photek's not even on it, but whatever, figured i'd try to understand what made source direct so "complicated"

here's the best i can figure

1) they do all sorts of different fills. their "dark metal" is sort of ridiculous in this regard. the first three bars are fairly constant, they do a different tiny fill at the end of every fourth. but then they also are constantly adding and dropping tiny elements all over the place

2) you are absolutely right, they mix the drums differently. all of the other producers use very "wet" drum sounds that definitely overlap each other. j majik is quite complex - at least "my sound" remix is - but his drum sounds blend into one another, as do grooverider's, ed rush's, etc.

interesting to note that the other producer on metalheadz 2 that mixes the drums that way is optical, who is like the poster boy for rigid! but he does weird things with smashing the bars into each other, truncating the drum loops so the whole thing sounds rushed and strange.

but i think aside from drum sounds this point here is totally key:

3) they're doing DRUM & bass rather than drum & bass. meaning that there's a huge sense of space in the source direct productions. unlike, say, ed rush or digital they don't bury the sound under a thick wall of bass pressure. they're very judicious with the bass, almost reserved to a fault. they basically keep things open except for some thudding accents on the end of bars. and the bass is NEVER midrangey, it's always sub-bassy, so it sounds less like a bassline and more like something huge smashing into the wall of the club, just a concussion in the air.

adam f's "metropolis" seems to share the approach. a very source direct-y track.

"hidden agenda" stood out as being the most self-consciously complicated in their approach. they also have some sort of fundamental difference w/ the rest of the pack that's hard to pin down. maybe that their tracks have basically NO forward momentum at all??

Yes! "Metropolis" fits in very well with both Photek and Source Direct.

Totally the connection with Optical is there too, really the problem with Optical is that "To Shape The Future" is as interesting as he ever got.

Re "Dispatch #2", for me no other track better sums up how confounding the rhythms can be in D&B. It's especially important that the first two minutes are so are like the sparsest, most straightforward 2-step track you've heard, and then the beat just breaks down into this absolutely weird groove intent on eating itself - yeah, it doesn't really have forward momentum, it just coils inwards, it's like a machine that keeps malfunctioning more and more dramatically.

"Pressing On" takes this internal coiling to a point that just becomes a bit messy, it's the malfunctions but there's no machine, though I still really like it. (this balance between operation and malfunction is pretty important for this kind of late-90s D&B though - techstep ultimately recoiled back into smooth operation but it is possible to have too little operation and too much malfunction. This would be my criticism of some of the most hyper-complex breakage stuff and Fanu to some extent: it verges on drill & bass style loss of groove.

"1) they do all sorts of different fills. their "dark metal" is sort of ridiculous in this regard. the first three bars are fairly constant, they do a different tiny fill at the end of every fourth. but then they also are constantly adding and dropping tiny elements all over the place"

Vahid I assume that, if you didn't already know it, you've read me harp on about Dom & Roland's "Elektra" enough times to track it down? It really is the absolute pinnacle of the "dark metal" style I think.

mutant revisited = more interesting than optical ever got! techstep must be the only genre that just got worse and worse from the blueprint! or maybe all genres are like that ...

is the adam f album ('colours') any good? i keep seeing it in my local secondhand shop, consider buying it for a few seconds then move on. he was so mindblowingly good with "metroplis" that i was always a bit disappointed with the rest of his output - mainly the jazz funk influenced stuff. i wish he'd stuck with those razor sharp beats / basslines. lets face it though, you're never going to top a track like metropolis.

alex reece is another one who produced a seminal record for metalheadz and then got bogged down in jazz d&b lite. (having said that, i loved the "feel the sunshine" ep when it came out).

although alex reece seemed to disappear all together after about '97. is 'so far' any good?

wait you like "feel the sunshine" but you don't like "jazz d&b lite"?

i actually love me some alex reece too - i ESPECIALLY love dj pulse's remix of "feel the sunshine". but i never really listen to my copy of "so far". put it this way, the tracks are linear to a fault. like even his best stuff, "pulp fiction" or whatever. the groove is established in the first 30 seconds and it goes like that until the end. at best he adds an acid line, a trumpet, a soul sample. but very very linear. and if i'm going to listen to stuff like that it's gotta be loud and rude, like urban takeover or click'n'cycle or mulder.

so what do you like about alex reece?

Ha ha double x-post:

No, but it's prescient: So Far is padded out with bad summery 2-step pop-d&b tracks from about 5 years before that became a big thing.

Colours is about half great, half meh - "Colours" and "Aromatherapy" are both great c. 1994 ambient jungle, there's both "Metropolis" and a great soundalike, and I actually really like the vocoder track "Music In My Mind".

The Al's Records album is better than So Far, I think, but I lost my copy quite a while ago so it's hard to verify. I think that that style was ultimately done better by people like Flytronix or E-Z Rollerz at the tail end of the 90s, although it's never been a sound I'm terribly drawn to. You could just stick with Doc Scott's "Far Away" and be done with it...

techstep must be the only genre that just got worse and worse from the blueprint! or maybe all genres are like that ...

-- moonship journey to baja

certainly d&b never had the creative longevity that house or techno has had (note my use of the past tense).

cue open hornets nest...

Please let's not have this discussion again. There are already several clustfuck threads devoted to the topic.

Fair point - sorry for bringing it up.

so what do you like about alex reece?

-- moonship journey to baja

like tim said, i think it's the summery vibe on tracks like 'feel the sunshine'. actually i think i preferred 'jazz master' off that ep anyway. the guy was seriously unprolific if you look at his discography. not quite sure how 'pulp fiction' fits into all of this. didn't he have to remix it slightly to get it released on island? goldie wouldn't let him use the original on his album or something.

ok here's the three albums i listen to instead of "so far"

in order to dance 6 - very bassy, very lush. in many parts very "cosmic" in the jacob's optical stairway sense. obviously since it's on r&s a very heavy detroit techno vibe over the whole thing.

revolutionary generation - some of this is surprisingly very tough, while still keeping a jazzy vibe. lots of it reminds me of guy called gerald or (especially) nookie

storm from the east - haha insert "quiet storm" joke. the most bukem-esque of the three. actually very much in line w/ the logical progression sound, but somehow transcends that. i think because it doesn't have the ultra-serious vibe of some GLR records, it's actually very relaxed / relaxing listening

thanks for the info. actually i used to have 'in order to dance 6' but have no idea where it's got to now. i liked the 'loop 2' ep a lot and the alex reece remix used to get some rotation (preferred the luke slater remix tho).

will look out for the other two on my record shopping travails. if we're talking about this style, i think my favourite must go to wax doctors 'the spectrum' offa the plat breaks 1 comp. absolutely immense record. few d&b records managed to capture the detroit spirit as much as that one (for me anyway).

Storm From The East 2 ain't bad either, esp. Alex Banks' "Control". Mind you it's mildly disconcerting to have a tune by Hyper-On Experience called "Reed Breeze"...

Finished listening to Modus Operandi and was reminded of why "KJZ" was always my favourite track on the album - pretty amazing programming, I love that fluttering cymbal sound. But god do the slow tracks suck. It was like the law at this point that every D&B album had to have at least two astonishingly awful downtempo moments, wasn't it?

couldn't agree with your more re. 'KJZ'. that track is a masterpiece in drum programming as well being a beautiful piece of music. but i thought the slower tracks worked quite well (for once) on this album. i love the walking bassline on '124'.

'124' modus operandi

you could do a great Rough Guide to DnB producers going downtempo tho

fave thing Alex Reece did = 'Detroit' with Wax Doctor. the single remix of 'Candles' was actually better than the album version despite being even poppier (ha, hopefully you know what I mean here).

you have to wonder tho why if these guys had such a hard-on for UR why they didn't at least start doing actual Techno. i was still shocked the first time i heard 'Mine To Give' tho.

alex reece had a project with wax doctor called fallen angels which is what i'd imagine dnb gone techno is. it is super generic and poppy and rushy and really great like breakbeat hardcore was. i think the "summery vibe" is over-attached to reece because you can also look at his tunes like they are just one continuous rinse (= pressure) (and yes, i am kind of reaching here). this is the fallen angels album. i'd be curious to know what you guys think. the single that preceded the album is worth checking, too. i guess if you prefer techstep/breaks to 2-step it wouldn't be your thing but it is a nice foil to stuff like virus.

i don't think i've ever heard source direct unless they were on the metalheadz comps.

For tricky:

Source Direct - Enemey Lines
http://www.zshare.net/audio/970943193549e9/

spare, pure, surprisingly funky

^^^otm photek description

cheers tim

I'm getting very positve readings

From back when i was flirting with Idiot Deranged Mumblings, loved this shit.
I have got to stop answering my own posts. It's me mamm who keeps butting in.
Is she keeping me behind the times? 10 years too late?

yes, "UFO" probably deserves some mention here.

tim what do you think of "two masks"? probably my fave source direct track.

just to bring it back to photek - t/s: "two masks" vs "ni ten ichi ryu"

fave Source Direct = "The Wedge". i haven't heard "two Masks".

"the wedge" is by hidden agenda.

dope track, though!