Now Is The Time: Photek - Solaris

A quick glance through Rupert Parkes' discography shows a visible gap in output between 2000 and 2011.  Parkes, better known as Photek, is a drum 'n bass legend, crafting a signature sound in the late 90s that sounded unlike the rest of the genre fare.  In interviews, Parkes states that he's remained busy throughout the "downtime," collaborating with the likes of Trent Reznor and producing for other acts and film scores.  For those of us who are primarily album-listeners though, he dropped off the map.  Yes, he did release a compilation of tracks in 2007 called Form & Function II, but that's more of a collection of scattered material than an actual album, and I just don't think those tracks are any good.

As of 2011, Photek seems to have returned to the scene in full force, and by that I mean the popular club scene, not drum 'n bass.  In fact he's sidled up to the post-dubstep bass kickers more than anything with his Aviator and Avalanche EPs, plus collaborations with current darlings of the moment FaltyDL, Boddika, and Pinch.  So, prior to this recent turn, what's the last product of significance from Photek?  It's 2000's Solaris: an exploration of house and techno with only a slight tinge of the dnb sound that Photek staked his name on.  Strangely, Solaris comes off as a strong precursor to the kinds of post-dubstep sounds produced by Joy Orbison et al.

I was very hot-and-cold on Solaris when it debuted.  I had grown into Parkes' paranoid "intelligent" dnb tropes: cold, complex rhythms evoking imagery of alien overseers in a world of unflinching surveillance (further proof).  Solaris has hints and touches of this mood throughout, but with a new sun-drenched sheen.  Opener "Terminus" launches into action with the sound of an airplane flyby, which when combined with the crystal blue waters on the album cover, transports the listener squarely to the tropics.  The differences between a vocal house track like "Mine to Give" and 1998's slinky "Knitevision" are stark, and my allegiances to the latter were clear.  I got the feeling that most other Photek fans felt the same as I, but mobbish dissent has a tendency to be much louder than curious enthusiasm.  Pitchfork has removed their old review of Solaris from their site, but a snippet still remains on its Metacritic page.  Read for yourself; it's not flattering.

Photek's maneuver with Solaris draws its fair share of parallels to contemporary electronic music, making me slower to judge similar movements by other artists and allowing me to listen to fresh tracks with a renewed historical perspective.  One could argue that Scuba's latest full length, Personality, is 2012's Solaris.  In both cases, the producer crafted an album that warmed up to more organic, human textures as well as potential dancefloor crossover instead of being mostly for headphone mood-setting.  Likewise, Personality has been much maligned by UK dubstep purists for being, well, a techno house album.  I think Personality is a weaker work for Scuba, but after revisiting Solaris, perhaps it just needs some time to ripen.  Will we still have mp3s in 2024?

On the other end of the spectrum, I come back to a song like "Glamourama" and think it would be a perfect B-side to a Joy Orbison and Boddika collaboration, producers of some of my favorite tracks from the past couple years.  How is it that an album as seemingly unimpactful as Solaris could have been a strong enough influence to shape sounds that would surface more than a decade later?  Due to Photek pairing up with some of the new talents, I assume there must be some reverence there, but remain skeptical of how far it goes.  The reactions to then-contemporary trends likely have had a more apparent impact.  Consider that Photek's brand of drum 'n bass was very isolated and moody compared to the majority of dnb bangers of the time, extremely similar to the atmospherics of early branching paths of dubstep like Burial.  The aggressive angle of American dubstep came through after Burial made his initial splash, actually putting the reactionary shoe on the other foot from Photek's late 90s situation.  In both cases though, the next step was to invite house influences to shed light in bleak dnb and dubstep's dark corners.

Current Photek seems to have caught up to himself and I'm excited to see what he comes out with next.  In the meantime, Solaris deserves a replay.  It's an album that, for those willing to suspend disbelief, sounds amazingly "now."  And I really mean "now" because the tides of these trends shift so quickly.  Here's to a late-2012 trip-hop revival!  You heard it here first.

Review: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

We've been told that space is the final frontier, but in the US we're witnessing the retiring of our nation's fleet of space shuttles due to scaled back government funding for manned outer space exploration.  Sure, private enterprises like SpaceX (with tremendous help from NASA) will continue the bold pursuit into the unknown, but the initiative's removal from the national docket leaves it to capture the attention of those who seek it out rather than the hearts of potentially any forward-thinking citizen with an inkling for discovery.  Human outer space exploration certainly inspired its fair share of scientific research and, perhaps in equal measure, the imaginations of thousands of artists, writers, and creative thinkers.  I have a feeling legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto always wanted his Mario character to explore space too.  In 2007's Super Mario Galaxy (SMG), Nintendo did just that, constructing an interplanetary mash-up of the Mushroom Kingdom and the Milky Way that serves as the perfect playground for another Mario adventure.  SMG may not capitalize on the full potential of its unique gravity-defying setting, but its desire to introduce players to a kind of world they've never quite come across is clear from the outset.

Mario games have always had inexplicably floating platforms, but in SMG those platforms usually come with their own gravitational pull, meaning you can run around a spherical "planet" without fear of falling off.  The general feel and aesthetic of this brand of platforming draws less from Hubble telescope images, and more from the likes of a giant mobile come to life.  Think Le Petit Prince multiplied by the moon-rolling credit sequence from Katamari Damacy and you're getting there. The outcome is not that you feel as if you're traversing across vast expanses, but rather that someone dumped out a toy chest in orbit of a small satellite and asked you to make sense of it.  SMG is still a platformer at heart, and to that end it is more about Mario's relationship with various floating objects than it is the zero-gravity environment that exists outside of objects' miniature atmospheres.

Given the space backdrop and the exploratory inclinations of previous polygonal Marios, I was surprised by how narrow SMG's critical path is.  Game structure and mechanics in SMG are not dissimilar from 64 or Sunshine (3D platforming with a hub world containing levels with multiple individual challenges), but a much larger quantity of the levels here push you along one specific route with little-to-no room for deviation.  For some games, this might be less of an issue, but 3D Mario games have a staunch precedent for collectible hunting and expansive levels with hidden nooks, making the lack thereof quite noticeable.

Let's not rag on SMG for tweaking the formula, but instead for the way it misapplies a swath of classic Mario tropes.  Take coins for example.  Coins in previous titles were a valued collectible item, earning you extra lives or potentially stars (symbolizing completion of a task), while also refilling lost health points.  In SMG coins only exist to revitalize health and for tallying a non-rewardable high score on a per-level basis.  A coin can help out in a pinch, but there's nothing to gain by "collecting" them.  Or how about the "lives" system in general?  Extra lives are worthless here since there's barely any reason you'll need more than the handful you begin with, plus the 5 Toad provides you every time you boot up the game.  As a final deflating action, when you quit out of the game, your lives count is returned to the default quantity.  Thus the idea of taking a chance on a risky jump to acquire a green 1-up mushroom always comes off as a poor value proposition.  With no rare grabs to incentivize more skillful platforming I found myself hanging close to the middle of the road, which remains a perfectly engaging ride on its own, but leaves a substantial amount of underused content around the fringes.

SMG's shortcomings with story, camera, and item implementation are even more of a shame considering how impeccable the universe Nintendo has put together presents itself.  There's inspired visual design for bringing the likes of lava, desert, and ice levels into the realm of fluctuating gravity. Shiny textures like brushed metal and floating troughs of water glisten with a tactile aura that will have your synesthesic senses tingling.  The orchestral score dynamically swells and swoons with an emotional range that an actual Mario plotline could only dream of.  I may have had issues with the controls at times, mainly due to unmanipulable camera angles, but the occasions where you bust out motion-specific commands functioned well and added some welcome variety to the standard run/jump activities.  During normal gameplay scenarios, a swift Wiimote whip will trigger a spin attack for Mario, replacing the somewhat clumsy punching ability from the N64 days.  Say what you will about the pervasiveness of waggle motions on the Wii, but this one doesn't require more than a quick wrist flip and the resulting action makes sense with the motion.  It's like pulling the thread out from a top to get it spinning upright.

I doubt SMG is going to inspire the next generation of astronauts since it has far more in common with the world of Power Stars than real ones.  The game takes an amateur-science approach to astrophysics and runs with it before all the data has been collected.  This can lead to inconsistencies (which objects are "planets," and which are just platforms?) but ultimately it serves to set a tone where it's pertinent to pay attention to the action instead of stopping to contemplate why everything around you is happening and how it's possible.  I mean, how is it that Mario gains the skill of breathing in the vacuum of space, but he can't breathe underwater?  It's not important, and there is no answer anyway.  There's an heir to a shelled dinosaur throne commanding a flying pirate ship shooting fireballs at you.  It's a Mario game, so this is what you signed up for.

Microgenre Moment: Hardbag

Ever wanted to throw down some obscure music knowledge to impress friends and strangers alike?  In Microgenre Moment I try my best pass along some basic Wikipedia overviews and links to relevant videos to get you up to speed on a specific sub-sub-genre of music.  I guarantee these posts will grant you the intellectual high ground in your next music-centered conversation.

"Hardbag was a genre of electronic dance music popular in the mid 1990s. Having evolved out of the handbag house scene in 1993-1994, the genre enjoyed massive, albeit brief, popularity, with several hardbag releases achieving positions in the upper echelons of the UK chart. It was at the time sometimes confused with Nu-NRG, yet the styles were discernibly different."

"The popularity of the hardbag genre reached its zenith in 1995 with releases by Candy Girls, Rollo & Sister Bliss and Mrs Wood all crossing over into the mainstream. Indeed, the sound began to meld with happy hardcore, evident on tracks such as "Forever young" by Interactive and "Rainbow Islands"- Seb."

"By early 1997 the hardbag craze had died down, and the sound began involving into what was to eventually become UK hard house. Labels such as Tripoli Trax expounded this sound via releases such as "Bells of revolution" by Lemon 8 and "Raise your hands" by Knuckleheadz."