Photek - Modus Operandi reissue

Stumbled on this by accident. The great reissues trend continues

https://bleep.com/release/426375-photek-modus-operandi

I actually just paid a hefty penny for an original copy on discogs. Same thing happened after I bought feed me weird things. I think they're just watching my discogs purchases

  On 11/11/2023 at 1:50 AM, exitonly said:

Stumbled on this by accident. The great reissues trend continues

https://bleep.com/release/426375-photek-modus-operandi

 

I actually just paid a hefty penny for an original copy on discogs. Same thing happened after I bought feed me weird things. I think they're just watching my discogs purchases

Bloody hell!

Wow! This is great news (bit pricey imo though)

Really hope they do Form & Function as well

  On 11/11/2023 at 2:46 AM, Pirtek said:

Really hope they do Form & Function as well

Obviously @exitonly has to buy it for a kidney off discogs first. Take one for the team!

  On 11/11/2023 at 3:28 AM, aencre said:

Obviously @exitonly has to buy it for a kidney off discogs first. Take one for the team!

who says i havent?

I remember when this came out. I went to Circuit City and bought it on cd. My friends and I would sometimes go to Walgreens and steal boxes of Coricidin Cough & Could and each eat a whole pack. We would also often steal cookies and donuts and eat them in store. On one such occasion I brought the Photek cd and late at night my friends and I had the cared pulled over in the middle of nowhere, all windows and sun roof open, complete high off our minds, blasting the Photek and dancing in the dark. I remember it just feeling *so cool* like the music was somehow really slow and moody and also had such intense fast percussion. It felt like I was dancing in slow motion but the earth was zipping through space at a billion miles per hour. Sick night. Kinda hard to believe I’m the same person. 

  On 11/11/2023 at 1:50 AM, exitonly said:

Stumbled on this by accident. The great reissues trend continues

https://bleep.com/release/426375-photek-modus-operandi

 

I actually just paid a hefty penny for an original copy on discogs. Same thing happened after I bought feed me weird things. I think they're just watching my discogs purchases

I'm also having a horrible run of reissues of things I have originals of:

FUSE - Dimension Intrusion

Villalobos - Alcachofa

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - entire back catalogue.

Anyways I don't have this so it's good news, although £50 is taking the piss.

Love this album 

Yeah, an absolute classic!!

Great to see it back in print, but crikey, those are practically Discogs prices already.

Also astonishing how prices change - I built up a bit of a vinyl collection that I had to sell off about 10 years ago and had absolutely no problem finding an original of this for a perfectly reasonable price at the time.

Apparently, Proper Records haven't got the rights to re-issue Form and Function, but they'll be re-releasing Solaris next year.

Classic album. Can’t justify that price tag plus shipping though, yikes! 

Photek's godlike peak moment after this it went down hill, Solaris was embarrassing.

  On 12/24/2023 at 8:57 AM, ARPA said:

Photek's godlike peak moment after this it went down hill, Solaris was embarrassing.

I don't know about embarrassing, but definitely past his best. FFII in 2007 did have the sublime One Nation on it though!

Some decent stuff on Solaris but it hasn't aged anywhere near as well as his debut. It's also really disjointed, like half of it half speed dnb, almost trip-hop-ish, then the rest is house, with one (really bad) dnb track smack in the middle. My favourite track from that era was 'DNA' on the Terminus EP:

If the whole album was like that, 'Terminus', 'Halogen' and 'Lost Blue Heaven' I'd fucking love it. 

Between the dodgy dubstep and EDM shit, there are a few really good tracks on Ku:Palm as well. 

I'd still take the bad stuff of that period over his jump up era, though. Form & Function II is probably the single most disappointing album I've ever bought. 

  On 12/24/2023 at 4:39 PM, purlieu said:

Some decent stuff on Solaris but it hasn't aged anywhere near as well as his debut. It's also really disjointed, like half of it half speed dnb, almost trip-hop-ish, then the rest is house, with one (really bad) dnb track smack in the middle. My favourite track from that era was 'DNA' on the Terminus EP:

If the whole album was like that, 'Terminus', 'Halogen' and 'Lost Blue Heaven' I'd fucking love it. 

Between the dodgy dubstep and EDM shit, there are a few really good tracks on Ku:Palm as well. 

I'd still take the bad stuff of that period over his jump up era, though. Form & Function II is probably the single most disappointing album I've ever bought. 

Expand  

I agree with your Solaris and Ku: Palm comments. 

The house stuff on Solaris is horrid, the rest of it sounds just plain lazy!
Alas, when Solaris was released I bought it "blindly", I remember being so disappointed *ugh*.
Everything he released after that I just touched with a long shit stick.

Love everything up to the first Form and Function, and One Nation from FFII

This cut from the Ku:Palm era was also OK :

And also this one, released on Tectonic :

But this is nowhere near the standard he had reached with Modus Operandi.

Good point though: his DJ Kicks mix is one of the best in the series.

  On 11/11/2023 at 4:21 AM, Alcofribas said:

somehow really slow and moody and also had such intense fast percussion

this is exactly how some online commenter once described the rhythm in Ni Ten Ichi Ryu, that it's both slow and fast simultaneously, and it's never left my mind since when listening to that track. that level of finesse is what makes it sound so zen/ninja and is one of the things that elevates it to (imo) the single greatest dnb/jungle tune ever written. (other aspects being the atmosphere etc and the tasty drum sound choices)

I remember the years following Brown Paper Bag and its accompanying video (1995ish?), when dnb entered the popular consciousness and became a mainstream presence. I liked it but I knew there was something lurking around the edges of it that offered more, as in more style and substance and staying power altogether. I just didn't know where to find it in those days. I remember going into #dnb rooms on Napster etc and asking for recommendations and people coming back with "try Ed Rush & Optical". it didn't scratch the itch. Photek, when I finally retroactively discovered him a few years later, really did. along with Source Direct and them types. and then later I discovered the rich world of OG jungle.

  On 12/30/2023 at 1:03 PM, usagi said:

that level of finesse is what makes it sound so zen/ninja and is one of the things that elevates it to (imo) the single greatest dnb/jungle tune ever written.

Totally agree. A masterpiece!!

This costs £56.49 now on Bleep. I'm sure it was £50 when it was first announced (?)

56 squids (plus god knows what in p&p) - Is it pressed on diamond or summit ?!

£50 at Juno so you can save a few quid there. 

Still remember buying this on release day at HMV, guy at the counter was a big photek fan, ended up having a chat about all the  12"s.

Still holds up pretty well today (though my copy admittedly looks a bit battered, stayed in my DJ bag for 'smoke rings' for a couple of years at least).

I bought it from Bleep before the price increase (we'll, my wife put it on her credit card for me, bless her!) Must say, it sounds pretty good on my set up!