I lost a fortune on this year's Mercury Music Prize (cash donations to the usual address, marked "sad loser" please) thanks to Roni Size (drum 'n' bass merchant from Bristol) sneaking up on the inside "artistic credibility" lane and taking the first prize away from the bookie's joint favourites, Radiohead and The Prodigy. If you want to find out why a panel of pretty knowledgeable music hacks thought Size's album was better than OK Computer and The Fat Of The Land, get down to a listening post near you and check out the latest addition to the Bristol beat. Like his neighbours Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky, Size seems destined to become the musical equivalent of a coffee table phenomenon. It was always on the cards that jungle/drum 'n' bass was going to make this sort of breakthrough, since it is a peculiarly British phenomenon and has done to the dance/club world what Britpop has done to the indie world, in terms of rejuvenation and media attention. While many thought that Goldie's Timeless album would be the first jungle effort to be garlanded with prizes, it was somehow fitting that an obscure underground act like Roni Size should be the first jungle winner of the Mercury, given that the particular genre remains marginalised - especially in the mainstream press. Modus Operandi by Photek is quite simply one of the most strangely refreshing and best produced albums you will hear this side of Brixton. Photek's real name is Rupert Parkes, a young man from the rock 'n' roll killing fields of Hertfordshire, and he's made an album that will single-handedly change, divert, influence and inspire the future direction of jungle. The fact that Rupert Parkes is white is relevant only in so much as previous pale skinned attempts to capture the predominantly black urban sound of jungle, as in Everything But The Girl and David Bowie, have been quite embarrassing, if not laughable in their attempts to "get down with the street kids".
The speed of the change, instigated by Parkes, is quite dizzying: jungle (which took its ironic name from how some morons choose to describe black dance music) started off as a sarf London-based mixture of ragga and hardcore, which predominantly featured just a dubbed-down bass guitar sound and an excessively speeded up drum beat. With its own indie record labels, its own clubs and its own pirate radio stations, it was originally a genre within the genre of house/techno. Jungle went overground when it started to be used in television commercials, The Face magazine started doing six-page features on it in their inimitable "hey kids, dig the happening new beat" style, and a 50-year-old David Bowie tried to re-invent himself for a younger audience by dabbling rather unwisely in it (act your age, David).
What differentiates Rupert Parkes from the wannabe pack is that on Modus Operandi he has brought his own white, rural background to impinge on the sounds, and avoided any "Wigga" ("White Nigga") pretentiousness. Showing little regard for jungle's dance-hall roots, Parkes has created an almost Krautrock, minimalist and machine-driven sound, which will doubtlessly be termed "numb 'n' bass" by the critics.
Like the best of Krautrock, there's something very eerie, if not downright spooky, about the sounds on this album. If you can imagine a collision in the studio between Kraftwerk and Goldie you're somewhere there.
Breaking up the beats is Parkes's inspired use of strings and wind chimes, though not in a Mike Oldfield way, and there's also a strange use of Oriental-type sounds, which doubtless come from his teenage obsession with martial arts movies. The songs go under titles like Aleph 1 and Trans 7 and if you're thinking "oh no, concept album alert, run for the hills", don't, because what Parkes has merely done is include fragments from the saner end of the prog rock spectrum, in much the same way that Spiritualised on Ladies and Gentlemen and Radiohead on OK Computer rehabilitated certain aspects of the moribund musical form. There are also bits of Miles Davis in there but this sure ain't no jungle/jazz fusion exercise. Dark and sinister but always shimmering, Modus Operandi will challenge and delight in equal measures. Listen without prejudice . . .
