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Recorded again in St Albans, the place he’d grown up, and launched in 1997, Modus Operandi initially bore the working title Reverse Youngsters—a nod, maybe, to Parkes’ fondness for switching up the course of his beats, flipping them forwards and backwards so typically that point appeared to face nonetheless even because it saved hurtling ahead. However the identify Modus Operandi was much more apropos. It got here from Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Warmth: When a sergeant asks Al Pacino’s character, a sorrowful cop with no illusions about his opponents, what the criminals’ M.O. is, Pacino shoots again in his trademark rasp, “Their M.O. is that they’re good.”
The bone-dry evaluation epitomized Parkes’ want to show his mettle in an intensely aggressive scene. That’s precisely what Modus Operandi is: a shot throughout the bow—an illustration of Parkes’ virtuoso ability, in addition to his willpower to take drum’n’bass, because the extra intricate iterations of the sound had more and more come to be recognized, into unexplored territory. If Goldie’s Timeless, as many have famous through the years, was the drum’n’bass equal of Pink Floyd’s space-rock epic, Modus Operandi would possibly as nicely have been an precise journey to the darkish aspect of the moon, a voyage into the airless, lightless unknown.
Throughout 10 interrelated tracks that play out like actions of a collection, Modus Operandi plunges right into a netherworld of skulking beats, viscous synths, and violent foreboding. It’s awash in seasick frequencies and bathed within the sounds of steel—scraping claws, clattering shell casings, glinting metal slicing by means of the penumbra. Neither strictly a membership document nor, by any means, a chillout soundtrack, it suggests a mortal face-off between rhythm and ambiance, every locked within the different’s loss of life grip.
In a milieu that prized dexterity, audacity, and velocity, the album’s opening monitor, “The Hidden Digital camera,” is a head-fake. After a sequence of Rhodes keys that sounds nearly like a jazz participant’s interpretation of church bells, the beat lastly drops, however the track can’t actually be known as drum’n’bass. There’s no hint of any canonical breakbeat within the shuffling snares and cottony flams, and the herky-jerky cadence has little in frequent with the way in which jungle and drum’n’bass usually transfer. Most significantly, the tempo is sluggish—a pensive 126 beats per minute, in comparison with the 160-170 vary that had turn out to be customary for the style.
The world was awash in chilled grooves in 1997, however “The Hidden Digital camera” is hardly your typical downtempo. It bobs with a coiled depth that telegraphs harmful instability. The kick drum hits simply earlier than the downbeat, the snares dance across the backbeat, and all of the drums in between are both speeding the beat, as if making up for misplaced time, or lagging behind. Unidentifiable noises, suggesting anguished dolphins, and grim sound results, like a handgun being cocked, stoke the anxious temper. But for all this, the vibe is relaxed, because of a spare, noirish standup bassline and synth pads that swirl just like the northern lights. The drum sample performs out in two-bar phrases, however the keys and pads are drawn out in longer arcs that overlap at uneven intervals. These overlapping phrases imply that your consideration is at all times following the music in parallel but contrasting paths—an indicator of Photek’s looping sleight-of-hand.
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