Description:
It's been three years since Roni Size and his Reprazent crew created perhaps the greatest drum and bass album ever made, the Mercury Music Prize-winning New Forms. Since then there has been the sclerotic project Breakbeat Era and Krust's own Coded Language work, while drum and bass itself has become ever more hard and insular. It has also become more marginalised in the UK while its popularity overseas has inversely increased, embraced as a kind of electronic punk. All this is reflected in In The Mode--a harder, more international album. Method Man, The Roots' Rhazel and Rage Against The Machine's Zack de la Rocha are employed f
It's been three years since Roni Size and his Reprazent crew created perhaps the greatest drum and bass album ever made, the Mercury Music Prize-winning New Forms. Since then there has been the sclerotic project Breakbeat Era and Krust's own Coded Language work, while drum and bass itself has become ever more hard and insular. It has also become more marginalised in the UK while its popularity overseas has inversely increased, embraced as a kind of electronic punk. All this is reflected in In The Mode--a harder, more international album. Method Man, The Roots' Rhazel and Rage Against The Machine's Zack de la Rocha are employed for a transatlantic celebrity shine and the mood is less groove, more grind. At times the energy and gravity-defying twists and turns of Size's production is stunning but only Rahzel appears to be comfortable with Reprazent's shape-shifting beats. The rest are on auto-pilot (though check Meth's Lady Di lyric) and the soulfulness of UK singer Onalee appears to have been put to one side, depriving In The Mode of her song-writing skills. There is little here that matches "Heroes", "Share The Fall" or "Watching Windows". Neither is there anything as instantly funky as "Brown Paper Bag" (though "System Check" echoes it). This doesn't make In The Mode a bad album. It's the best artist drum and bass album of the year 2000. It's just not a great one like its predecessor. --Jake Barnes
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Manufacturer: Talkin Loud
Release date: 9 October 2000
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0731454817622 UPC: 731454817622
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