With their new album ‘Black Sun’, Hyperdub’s Kode9 & the Spaceape have left tired genre pigeonholes behind, switched up their sound and conjured a bright, neon-lit sci-fi parable of futuristic house, fractured breakbeats, cryptic poetry and bleeps, where nothing is as it seems. Infl uenced by JG Ballard, Solaris, UK funky, THX1138 and Prince Far-I, it’s a dystopian funk epic that should see them reach a whole new audience. DJmag fi nds out more… Words: BEN MURPHY cience fi ction and electronic changed, became something other but still enabled through a gauze of Kode9’s gloopy, buzzing music have a chequered life, what would that be like?” wonders Spaceape. computerfunk, living colours that stretch through history together. Both are Spaceape’s oblique, cryptic lyrics, and chattering, often obsessed with the Camberwell, South London-dwelling Glaswegian hypermodern beats, a machine-gun spray of broken future, interwoven with new Kode9 (Steve Goodman) will be familiar to many rhythms and weird house music, ‘Black Sun’ is what technology and look to electronic music fans as the owner of the peerless, happens when two attuned brains with a distinct transport the reader, viewer or always one-step-ahead label Hyperdub (responsible conceptual vision of how they want their music to listener to other worlds. But for launching mavericks like Burial, Ikonika, Zomby sound — and what they want it to stand for — collide. it’s rare that beats ‘n’ and Darkstar into the world), as a globetrotting DJ “We share a lot in common and I guess that’s why, basslines are able to allude to fantasy without and producer who’s played a prominent part in the when we work together, it comes out sounding like it seeming contrived, all naff aliens and X Files recent evolutions and mutations of dance, from does,” says Spaceape on the recording of the album codswallop. dubstep, wonky, grime and funky to the many and its dark future world/parallel dimension theme. So when the combination of the two does work — in transfi gurations that have followed them. “The concept of the future is something we have the Detroit undersea techno worlds of Drexciya, the The name of Spaceape (Stephen Gordon to his folks), thought about on both our albums and in our conceptual electro visions of Cybotron, Kraftwerk’s who also resides in Camberwell, may seem less separate projects, but I would say that there is a prescient ‘Computer World’ — it’s capable of established, but his rich, deliberately enunciated present reality in much of what we do. Many of the transcending the sum of its parts and teleporting us Caribbean/London tones will be well-known to those ideas on ‘Black Sun’ are borne out of realities somewhere brand new, thrilling, mind-warping. who’ve sunk into his drawling, dark space-age poetry that exist right now.” on tracks with Kode9, Martyn and The Echologist, and Kode9 & the Spaceape’s new album ‘Black Sun’ (out with Kevin Martin (The Bug) as Cult Of The 13th Hour. That’s because Kode9 & the 18th April on Hyperdub), their second and follow-up In ‘Black Sun’, Kode9 & Spaceape have crafted Spaceape understand that to 2006’s ‘Memories Of The Future’, is an entirely something entirely different to its predecessor, an the best science fi ction fresh distillation of this idea — the product of two uptempo, cohesive mix of mongrel styles as strange, analyses the problems, sci-fi obsessed minds that creates a parallel disquieting and insidiously seductive as a stroll politics and fears of dimension entirely its own. through the rainy, dangerous neon streets of the real world, in “Rather than disappearing up our own arses onto Deckard’s Los Angeles. the present day, some other planet in outer space, we talked about Hermetically sealing us off from the here and now and ameliorates what it would be like if the source of our energy into its own sound world, where reality can be heard them into a 064 www.djmag.com DJ496.kode9_feat.indd 64 16/3/11 16:43:52 futuristic, more digestible form — something that your hard hat. Opening track ‘Black Smoke’ is a second album for Hyperdub, ‘Untrue’. infl uenced the lyrical and musical direction of the polyrhythmic chatter of splintered drums, a dark “The term Black Sun originally came to me through new album from the beginning, and the process of portent of the rising smoke of a torched, ruined engaging in ritual burnings of the Sun newspaper how it was made. future under the yoke of control; at one point whilst Burial was a Mercury nominee. “The album is our real experiences from the last few Spaceape intones, “Tell me, am I going to meet the “They had started a witch-hunt to reveal his real years camoufl aged as dystopia [a repressive future hereafter, master?” But rather than be wreathed in identity, and that really pissed me off,” he grimaces. society],” Kode9 says. “We seem to fi nd ourselves apocalyptic sounds, the ascending, almost-alive “After that, the term took on a life of its own and drawn to those kinds of sonic worlds. We are both synth lines seem to fl oat and writhe in space. It’s an became the name of my 2009 single, which was a bit interested in science fi ction so that is part of it, but atmosphere of disorientation rather than horror, of a crossroads for me musically.” it’s a different kind of dystopia from the last, and it is closer to the ambivalent oddness of departed sci-fi based in our real experiences. It’s not a dark place at author JG Ballard, who it turns out had a ghostly Ah yes, that shift of sound. The original single ‘Black all, but rather one of strange light and colours, and I hand in the album’s title. Sun’ saw Kode9 break from the fractured, mutated think we feel it becomes a more strangely-coloured “After we fi nished the album, I came across a great dubstep, electronica and garage of his past place as the album progresses.” reference to Black Sun in the JG Ballard story, The productions and move towards the 4/4 beats and Day Of Forever, which coincidentally works really well percussion-heavy Soca infl uences of UK funky — a SHIFTS IN SOUND with the desert vibe of the album’s cover artwork,” more uptempo and universal dancefl oor sound, albeit Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore... Kode9 recalls. But, like the record’s themes, the shot through with his signature off-world keys and ‘Black Sun’ is dense in detail, a multi-layered album’s foreboding title had a precedent in the real bizarro atmospheres. And this shift has clearly been psychotropic trip through urban jungles populated by world, too, which sprang from the producer’s run-ins an impetus and inspiration for him to explore new freakazoid fl ora that drip squelching ultra-bright with the right-wing tabloid press when Burial was musical territory, both in his own productions and in synth pigments, fauna that barks bizarre bleeps. Pack nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2009 for his the increasingly diverse directions that Hyperdub has DJ496.kode9_feat.indd 65 16/3/11 16:43:59 strayed in, with the next-level 4/4 experiments of UK that listeners can apply their interpretations to The Last Poets, or Prince Far-I to name a few. funky artists like Ill Blu, Scratcha DVA and them. Lyrically, though, I was always taken by artists like Funkystepz, as well as the bleepy skweee funk of “I knew I didn’t want to cover things I’d written Matt Johnson of The The, particularly on his Ikonika. about on ‘Memories Of The Future’,” Spaceape ‘Infected’ album or Dr Octagon for the pure On Kode9’s 2010 entry to the long-running ‘DJ Kicks’ remembers on the genesis of his scribing for the surrealness of his ideas, a real wide range of stuff, mix series, he really laid his cards on the table, album. “I began writing about things that either really. But when I started recording with Kode 9, the crafting a blend of pure kinetic energy that took in touched me or hurt me in some way and as I was best way to express myself and to abstract the track, the techno of Lone and Aardvarck, Arabesque dayglo writing and the stories moved further and further ‘Sign of The Dub/Sine’ from its original version was to grime of Sticky’s underground anthem ‘Jumeirah away from me, it became clear they inhabited the speak the lyrics.” Riddim Sequel’ and unadulterated funky of Grevious same world. A place that breathed a different Angel’s ‘Move Down Low’. It was a coup de grace for atmosphere; had different rules; politics; desires; CHA CHA any of the dolts who thought he was just a “dubstep religions; even a different light to our own. Many The third and final part of the MC Escher jigsaw puzzle DJ” and a reminder for the rest of us that he’s more things, although recognisable, are shaped in a that is ‘Black Sun’ is the soulful voice of Cha Cha, a than capable of rocking any club to its foundations. different way, where elements of what we know still singer from Shanghai, China who Kode9 met while “For me it wasn’t about challenging people’s pre- exist but are now either warped or fragmented. That DJing at her partner Gaz’s underground party The conceptions primarily, but rather just presenting sense of a distorted reality comes directly from our Shelter in the city.