Solaris

Indebted to hard-edged Chicago acid-track producers like Adonis and Armando, Parkes constructed brittle, distorted drum-machine breaks (instead of the usual: endlessly tweaked skittery breakbeats) and matched them with claustrophobic analogue effects, most of which hark back at least a decade or so.... In all, Solaris is just as dense and intensive a production as most of Photek's previous work -- for better, but occasionally for worse -- but the range of styles points to a more ambitious future.

May be Photek's best record yet. [Nov. 2000, p.206]

An album of supreme control, Solaris proves that not all Zeitgeist tickling beats are necessarily bound for the coffee table.

For Solaris, Photek sticks to his signature style of clinical percussion etching a variety of danceable rhythms. Of the 11 tracks, only "Terminus," the disc?s opener, is truly jungle. The rest of the album features a technophile's gift bag of futuristic dance cuts... Most all of it's gorgeous stuff, and high praise is in order.

Last year's 'Bleeps Tune' proved conclusively that he could do drum & bass better than anyone else around, 'Solaris' proves that he has the nerve and range to go beyond it, continuing to source new sounds and create rewarding albums. The best, you feel however, is yet to come.

Photek, has shaken things up with his second full-length album, Solaris -- it owes more to techno and house than to drum-and-bass.

Solaris is like no Photek album you've ever heard before: It's an album that celebrates both dance and relaxation, touching on deep house, trip-hop, and ambient, with (gasp) only one drum-and-bass track (the typically spare "Infinity"). Sentimentality for his musical roots and the desire to create music with a warmer, more human feel drive Photek on these 11 disparate tracks, and the outcome is mixed.

With "Modus Operandi," Photek blew open the possibilities of drum 'n' bass by paring the genre down to its simplest, most ominous elements. Solaris, by comparison, sounds absolutely generic.