Form & Function
Like the best drum & bass musicians, Photek explores the nuances of the rhythms that most jungle musicians, blinded by dance-floor strobe lights, take for granted. His rarefied electronic tracks rarely overlap more than a handful of discrete sonic elements. On "The Water Margin," for example, cetacean burbles bounce amid an extended percussion solo and a lone, vaporous, synthetic woodwind. And that's it. The composerly sense of musical development Photek brings to these skeletal constructions has lent his earliest recordings a reputation as the blueprint of avant-garde drum & bass. Four of those early recordings, "The Water Margin" among them, are collected onForm & Function, which also includes six appropriately uncluttered remixes (by J Majik, Doc Scott, Peshay, and others) and two brand new tracks, one spooky, one funky.--Marc Weidenbaum