What's a Drum 'n' Bass Guru/Savior/Genius to Do? A Talk with Photek

Photek

Now, depending on what pills you're popping, this phenomenon of nightmarish, ever-increasing BPMs could be exactly what you're looking for. But when the line got fuzzy between drum 'n' bass and gabber (the hardest and fastest form of dance music, owing as much to the Dead Kennedys as to Juan Atkins), some artists realized that if it was going to continue as a creative form of expression, drum 'n' bass needed a new direction.

Photek (aka Rupert Parkes, aka Code of Practice, Aquarius, Studio Pressure, the Truper and Sentinel?did I forget any?) started his journey into drum 'n' bass back when it was still called "jungle" in the early 90s. Composing under the moniker Aquarius, Parkes first hooked up with likeminded junglist LTJ Bukem and his Good Looking Records. Instead of just continuing to crank up the BPMs and focusing on the wicked fast breakbeats, Bukem and the Good Looking artists concentrated on the atmospherics of the music.

Although Photek's debut LP, 1997's Modus Operandi, and 1998 follow-up, the remix and singles compilation Form & Function, made quite a splash on release, earlier this year Bukem released Journey Inwards, his debut solo LP, showcasing his jazzy stylistic approach, and it hasn't received the attention intelligent drum 'n' bass artists would say it deserves. It's the harder drum 'n' bass styles (on records by producers like Technical Itch and Panacea) that were credited with providing the innovative force on the music toward the end of the last decade.

Well, Parkes thinks that sucks. His minimalist composition, penchant for stabbing blasts of jazz horns and fanatically clean, precise production lend his drum 'n' bass a kind of haunting quality, but Photek's always shied away from violent, gabber-esque rampages. And now, after landing a deal with Virgin's Science imprint in the UK and releasing two drum 'n' bass LPs in the past three years, Parkes says he's fed up with the whole cultish drum 'n' bass scene now that it's so focused on the fast, nihilistic styles. So what's a drum 'n' bass guru/savior/genius like Photek to do? Fuck it, make a house record.

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"I've been thinking for a while about going in a new direction," Parkes tells me when we speak on the phone. "There've been moments that I've almost wanted to disown jungle. It's sounded to me like nothing more than funky reggae beats to horror film noise. I wasn't into it. I just said I'm not going to do this. It was just adolescent aggression to me. There was nothing there for me to respond to. I don't feel that, and the music I wanted to hear and make certainly would not fit with that." Let me clarify that the record isn't all house music. Truth is, the new album, Solaris (Astralwerks), is too diverse to be called any kind of fill-in-the-blank record. He's got everything from UK garage and triphop to dub and ambient here, and there is one drum 'n' bass track: "Infinity" (probably the best cut on the record, though I may be saying that because it's the only one that scratched my itch for the slammin' Photek drum 'n' bass I've been waiting for). But three or four tracks on Solaris are unabashed, 1980s Chicago house, replete with cheesy drum-machine tom sounds and handclaps. Songs like "Glamourama," "Mine to Give" and "Can't Come Down" are straight outta 1988 ooom-clap, ooom-clap, ooom-clap house. Parkes even got renowned house singer Robert Owens on two tracks.

Some of the hardcore drum 'n' bass heads are going to accuse Photek of selling out by making a far more accessible house record. But you've got to hand it to the guy?he's got serious balls. The fact is, when you're sitting on top of the world like Photek is, the only one who can tell you what you can or can't do is yourself. Besides, Parkes is quick to point out that, in some ways, this is just getting back to his roots.

"Four or five years before Modus, I was into all kinds of stuff, some of it was jazzy house stuff," he says. "That led to reggae, which leads to all kinds of things that stylistically you could say are more sinister."

Listening to Parkes play with the decay on the analog synth pulsing through "Junk," you may wonder whether he owes royalties to Kraftwerk for this record, but it still somehow comes off as futuristic. It'll get you shaking your ass while you indulge your guilty pleasure for Roland 808 handclaps and tom sounds, but it still has that kind of paranoid Photek minimalism that keeps you scanning over your shoulders. And Owens' singing, "If that don't make you happy, I don't know, I don't know," with his slick, sleazy style, brings back how cool that stuff used to sound. It's the kind of music that in 1988 used to rev up that crazy high-haired high school girl as she drove around blasting Chicago house mixes through the Alpine system her boyfriend put into her daddy's Cutlas. It always was great music, perfect for getting your body moving, and it's largely responsible for any of the electronic dance music we hear today.

"I'm trying to capture that magic of the late 80s and early 90s?when electronic music first hit me," Parkes says. "That type of nostalgia is all over this record. This feeling of a phenomenon of some sort."

Unfortunately, Solaris lacks a sense of cohesiveness. Photek presents some of the new styles as ideas, but he fades many of them out prematurely as if he hadn't thought out far enough to turn the ideas into actual songs. The Jan Hammer-like synths and ambient washes sound nice over the heavily delayed dub rhythm on "Halogen," but it just sort of meanders for a few minutes without ever breaking into a solid groove or taking off, and the beautiful ambient textures on the album's short closer "Under the Palms" seem out of place tacked onto the end of this record. By applying the Photek minimalism that works so well with his drum 'n' bass to some of the slower 4/4 rhythms, Parkes is able on some songs to instill a tribal, almost primal quality in the music. But on songs like the title track, which takes yet another solid house beat and simply runs it into the ground after five minutes before suddenly fading out disjointedly, it comes off as just plain boring.

It's hard to decipher what audience Parkes had in mind when he made this record. It's too sparse for club play, and too house for drum 'n' bass purists. But then, that's probably exactly why he made this record. Sick of all the pigeonholing and constant updating of vague dance-music genre and subgenre definitions, Parkes decided to break out of the cult and take a chance with something new. It seems Photek really didn't have any specific music fan in mind at all. He made this record for himself.

"This is totally unfamiliar ground," he says. "I'm taking a big risk here. I know that I could have, with my reputation, just done parts 1, 2, 3 to 100 of what I've done already. I could sit on that for the rest of my life. But I made the music that I wanted to hear now. And still, that doesn't stop me from being nervous about what people think of what will probably be called Photek's first real house track. I have three house tracks on this record, and I think they fit in perfectly."

Photek plays Tues., Sept. 26, at Centro-Fly, 45 W. 21st St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 627-7770.