RONI SIZE/REPRAZENT
In The Mode. (Talkin Loud/Island)
Rating: 5 out of 7
By Ken Micallef

   With his Reprazent posse of DJ Krust, Die, Suv, MC Dynamite, and vocalist Onalee, Roni Size married bombastic drum-n-bass, jaz, and the Caribbean-influenced soul of Bristol on his debut, New Forms. Jungle jazz was all the rage then, and Size was its messiah. He brought together pop sensibilities and underground jazz, blaring hip-hop drum loops and surreal vocals, futuristic sounds, and feel-good songs. New Forms was the ultimate end-of-the-century soundtrack.
   But In The Mode. forgoes innovation for questionable hip-hop credibility. The beats are still drum—n-bass—of a style, but the edges are harder, the raps are ominous  and omnipresent, and New Forms' subtle jazz influence is gone. 
   Where many see the stand-off between drum—n-bass's various hardstep camps as a dead end, Size has actually made his music harder, darker, and uglier than ever before. Rahzel, Method Man, and Zack De La Rocha add their skills to the proceedings, but the real star is still the sound—a bruising amalgam of robo-bombastic beats, swooping hairpin siren calls and sequencers, and bass modules replicating the end of the world. Rahzel's "In Tune With" is a revelation, though—Size cutting up the human beatbox into various samples to create a funky track from the ingredients. 
   But much of the album—the annoying "Who Told You," the queasy "Mexican," the all-too-brief "System Check," is either drum and bass in stasis or a calculated attempt at street cred that falls flat. In performance, Reprazent resembles the cast of Star Trek as each musician works a computer monitor and the music rumbles like an interstellar asteroid spinning out to space. In The Mode: soundtrack to nowhere. 

All recordings courtesy of Island/Talkin Loud. “Who Told You” written by Size, Kausman, Smith; courtesy of Universal-MCA Music Publishing, a division of Universal Studios, Inc. (ASCAP)/Full Cycle Music/Bucks Music. “Lucky Pressure” written by Size, Southey, Bowen; courtesy of Universal-MCA Music Publishing, a division of Universal Studios, Inc. (ASCAP)/Copyright Control/EMI Music Publishing. “Snapshots” written by Size, Smith, Bowen; courtesy of Universal-MCA Music Publishing, a division of Universal Studios Inc. (ASCAP)/EMI Music Publishing.