Returning a favor to Tomas Halberstad for sending me his album The Anger illustrated with 1/6 of a painting. Each country to mail him for it get's one copy, each containing a piece of a painting. The album itself was a breezy piece of energy pumping electronica and vocals that make for a solid combination that went perfect with the heat these days. It grabbed me and got me moving again.
One of my first vinyl purchases back in the day included the 12" single of Photek's Modus Operandi, one heck of a killer record that marked a time in the drum'n'bass scene. For me, the mid and late '90s where the best in the scene, dark introspectives of minimal yet powerful experiments in drum'n'bass breaks - soaking in intelligent ambient and soundscapes. A sound that defined the pre-2K madness where we wondered through our adolescence, trying to feed our craving for something new - now the grunge had died and post-rock was,'t even a genre yet.
Underground parties in basements of bars where only the local old folk hung by night, getting beer in the night-shop around the corner because stock was limited, trading obscure mixtapes we got of our shitty tapedecks... it had a romantic appeal to it that got lost in the abundance of todays digital offers.
Great was my joy when @ninjamixdump dropped a 2h mix-session of Photek, recorded in 1997 for the BBC's Radio 1 Essential Mix series. The first hour contains a bulk-load of classics from that time and then drops back to Goldie's epic lengthed 'Mother' topped of with some of Photek's close to flawless mix-in's.
