Photek

Rupert Parkes earned recognition as jungle’s foremost artistic and cerebral producer through his output under the names Code of Practice, Aquarius, Studio Pressure, the Truper, and Sentinel, Photek serving as his primary alias, even while Goldie claimed the genre’s earliest superstar status. He advanced from raw hardstep issued on Certificate 18 and Street Beats to the floating, sub-aquatic “dolphin” style associated with L.T.J. Bukem’s Good Looking label before shaping a sound that moved drum’n’bass away from pure dancefloor utility and into detailed breakbeat territory intended for concentrated listening. Parkes’ painstakingly layered rhythm construction, which could consume weeks of computer work, together with the unmistakable atmosphere of brooding tension captured on tracks such as “The Hidden Camera” and “UFO,” helped fuel the resurgence of darker drum’n’bass in the closing years of the 1990s.

As a teenager Parkes absorbed electro, techno, and hip-hop alongside the freer expressions of jazz and fusion. With a sampler purchased through a £2000 loan from the Trust of the Prince of Wales he began making tracks, debuting on Paul Solomon’s Certificate 18 Records under the Studio Pressure name. Additional material appeared on Basement as Sentinel and on Street Beats as the Truper before he launched a run of 12-inch singles on his own Photek Records imprint; those releases secured further outlets on Goldie’s Metalheadz label and L.T.J. Bukem’s Good Looking, plus a remix of Therapy?’s “Loose.”

After more than 80 drum’n’bass tracks had appeared across six different labels, Virgin offered Parkes a five-album contract with its Science subsidiary, stipulating that he could continue issuing material on independent imprints. His first Science project, the Hidden Camera EP, surfaced in May 1996. The follow-up single Ni-Ten-Ichi-Ryu reflected a growing fascination with martial-arts principles applied to production (the title translates as “two swords, one technique”). Virgin gathered those two releases into the 1997 compilation Risc vs. Reward and then issued the debut Photek album Modus Operandi in September 1997. Though widely anticipated, the album received mixed reviews; it was succeeded in 1998 by Form & Function, a collection that combined earlier Photek Records cuts with new material and remixes. Over the next two years Parkes concentrated on his Photek Productions label, culminating in the 2000 album Solaris, which largely stepped outside drum’n’bass and drew heavily on early Chicago house, with heavyweight vocalist Robert Owens appearing on two tracks.

During the following decade Parkes maintained a selective release schedule on vinyl. He turned toward film scoring and contributed programming assistance to Trent Reznor on Nine Inch Nails’ 2005 album With Teeth. A portion of his 2000–2007 work was assembled as Form & Function, Vol. 2 for Sanctuary in 2007. In 2011 and 2012 he returned to greater activity, issuing several singles and EPs on Photek Productions, collaborating with dubstep producer Pinch, and delivering a volume in !K7’s long-running DJ-Kicks series. The mix, which incorporated several of his own pieces, centered on contemporary techno, downtempo, and atmospheric dubstep while omitting drum’n’bass entirely.