Photek Returns to Drum and Bass After 13 Years With "30 Seconds Out"
Photek, the London producer Rupert Parkes has recorded as since the mid-90s, released "30 Seconds Out" on July 17, 2026, his first solo club single since the 'Two' EP in 2013. It's out now on Bandcamp, Beatport, Traxsource, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, on reMod, a label he runs himself.
The cover art keeps things stripped down: a matte grey military helicopter shot over a hazy city skyline, close to the visual language Photek used on Modus Operandi in 1997. That album, and Form & Function the year after, helped set the template for a generation of drum and bass built on surgical edits and sub-bass weight instead of samples. That lineage runs back through jungle to Jamaican sound system culture: dub's low end and its sense of space, translated into breakbeats.
Photek spent most of the years in between scoring film and TV instead of releasing club tracks, including Need for Speed in 2016 and Netflix's Into the Night, with the occasional remix along the way. The first real sign of a return was a 43-second clip he posted in April 2020, tagged #modusoperandi and #reMod, captioned "New music: reMod 2020 test#2." Six years later, reMod is a real label and "30 Seconds Out" is a real release.
There's more coming. On April 24, 2026, Photek posted a mix on SoundCloud pulling from an unreleased project called Form & Function 3, the long-rumored follow-up to the two compilations that gave the series its name, alongside unreleased Metalheadz material. Nothing about Form & Function 3 is confirmed yet, no date, no tracklist, but the mix is the clearest sign so far that "30 Seconds Out" is a first step and not a one-off.
Listen to "30 Seconds Out" on Bandcamp or Beatport. More on Photek's catalog is on his ReggaeEDM artist page.
Sources
30 Seconds Out - Photek (Bandcamp)
Photek - 30 Seconds Out (Beatport)
Jungle pioneer Photek is teasing new music (Mixmag)
