A DEEEEEP INSIGHT INTO KODE9

I came across this Q&A: Kode9 by Philip Sherburne its pretty lengthy and deep but well worth a read, that is of course if you are interested in dubstep or should i say D-step, Hyperdub, swung beats, skippy hi-hats, an emphasis on nimble snares, rim-shots and Kode9 himself read on. It is interesting stuff!!!


It's not an exaggeration to say that UK "bass music" — that shifting configuration of subgenres spanning UK garage, grime, dubstep, funky and still more, nameless styles — simply wouldn't be the same without the existence of the Hyperdub label. Run by Steve Goodman (aka Kode9), Hyperdub has had its greatest success with Burial, whose ghostly, uncanny tracks hover wraithlike at the margins of genre, broadcasting vintage 2step rhythms through an ambient fog suggestive of William Basinski's melancholic explorations.

But there's far more to Hyperdub than Burial. Originally, it wasn't even a label. It was a website dedicated to critical texts on electronic music — Afrofuturism and concepts like Goodman's theory of "speed tribes," in which genres and scenes coalesced around certain tempo ranges. Goodman launched the label in 2004, with a pair of ten-inch singles, both featuring Daddi Gee, released under his Kode9 alias. The unconventionality of his approach was immediately apparent: "Sine of the Dub" was nearly beatless and mostly empty space, to boot, featuring little more than Gee's dark muttering and a periodic swelling of bass. (It appeared even stranger once it emerged that the song was a distant version of Prince's "Sign of the Times.")

Since then, Hyperdub has remained one of electronic dance music's most unpredictable labels. As dubstep has become more formulaic, Hyperdub has proven itself ever more counter-intuitive, ducking and feinting through mutation after mutation, and folding elements of hip-hop, G-funk, soca, psychedelia and funky into the mix. While certain sonic similarities connect the label's artists — from relative newcomers like Zomby, Quarta 330 and Ikonika to veterans like the Bug — what they mostly hold in common is their resistance to convention in pursuit of a shape-shifting sonic ideal. With Kode9's thrilling new single "Bad"/"2 Bad" just out, we caught up with him to talk about Hyperdub, dubstep and the promise and problematics of genre.

How would you characterize the present state of UK electronic music, or "bass culture"?

Lots of little interesting things, but nothing totally mind-blowing that I'm hearing. I think UK electronic music is a bit of a mess right now and very micro-segmented, to be honest. But there are some lines of intersection that are promising. As a DJ, all I really hold onto as a unifying theme is a certain bass foundation and tempo. Right now my sets occupy a couple of tempos. From the point of view of a selector, I think it helps to subtract the specific genre designation and select my own matrix of music — so that a dubstep tune is forced into the same universe as a house tune, a hip-hop beat into the same universe as a techno tune and an '80s funk thing in the same universe as a grime track, for example. It's not that I'm interested in being eclectic. I usually don't hear any consistency in most self-proclaimed "eclectic DJs" — I actually have very narrow, intolerant tastes as a DJ. It's rather that the only way I can build a consistent vibe in all this mess is to just temporarily subtract the genre descriptor. There is nothing new about that I suppose. But I'm not doing it because I think genres are bad as such. They are, in fact, the best places for styles to be nurtured. It's just that I want to play the best music out of several styles.

I sometimes think of Hyperdub as dubstep's "loyal opposition" — it's a part of dubstep culture and yet it remains outside of it, or at the very least on its margins.

Loyalty, schmoyalty. Dubstep doesn't need loyalty. It's not a fragile little creature that needs to be nurtured — at its centre, it's a big, ugly and increasingly popular monster that is gorging itself into immobility. The mainstream of dubstep is becoming such an abortion that it's really very little nothing to do with anything I'm interested in musically, apart from tempo.

I've been related to dubstep for around 9-10 years, so it's well past the stage of needing another uncritical proponent. You're right that Hyperdub does occupy a slightly weird position. Burial is by far the biggest artist that has been related to the genre, but he's still at the periphery musically. I've always just thought of him as a UK garage artist anyway. Hyperdub's mission is to follow its own path, draw from where it needs to, take from where it takes, give to where it gives. If it has functioned as an internal critique of dubstep, then this is just a side-effect of this mission without a plan.

A few years ago I remember you using the word "D-step" in interviews, presumably as a way of distancing yourself from a genre that at the time seemed to be settling into a stale collection of tropes. Now, with rapidfire 4/4 records like "Bad" and "2 Bad," there's talk of you "going funky," in reference to the currently ascendant house/garagesubgenre. When you produce, to what extent are you consciously engaging in conversation with the genre?

I haven't "gone funky," although people find it hard to relate to the idea that you are not attached to one camp or another in a black-and-white way. I play a lot of that stuff and support some aspects of where that music is going, what it brings back, and what else it has allowed me to bring into my sets and how it has re-emphasized rhythm. With d-step, I just find it easier to subtract the name — it allows me to hear the good stuff and ignore the bulk. Really, I'm just trying to wire together my own matrix of music to DJ, listen to and release, without being unnecessarily obstructed by other people's discourse. I'm not anti-genre designations — sure they are fictions, but they are fictions that have real effects. I just don't trust being represented, or fitting in with others' designations any more. I run a label called Hyperdub. That word is not a genre title, but it's open enough for me to ignore micro-segmentations and weave together my own selection.

Back in the days when Hyperdub was a website — a blog before there were blogs, in some ways — you broke musical styles down according to tempo, which I always found a provocative way to re-assess our assumptions about various dance-music genres.

I do think the little magazine part of Hyperdub was a precursor to the best side of music blogging, i.e. not the disingenuous sneering, ego polishing, cool-hunting side but rather a space for interviews with unlimited length, with no beginning or end, with no irritating editor, etc. Really, the idea was just to temporarily get my favourite writers such as Kodwo Eshun and K-punk writing in the same place. I was also interested in how dance-music culture gravitated tribally around speeds. Like you had these nodes on the BPM matrix which functioned as attractors for scenes, and these speed tribes would, over time, develop flocking behaviour: dispersing, speeding up, slowing down, coalescing. I suppose one interesting question about electronic dance music now is whether it is in terminal entropy, destined to dissipate, or whether it could flip into something totally unforeseen that changes all the rules of the game.

2step seems to be returning to people's consciousness, whether it's via forum threads linking to vintage UKG records archived via YouTube, or new productions self-consciously referencing 2step's key motifs (swung beats, skippy hi-hats, an emphasis on nimble snares and rim-shots). I couldn't be happier about it, because I've always felt that UKG contained so many possibilities that were never really explored. Do you think a revival of interest in classic 2step has anything to offer in the way of paths less taken, or is it doomed to be merely another self-consuming retro fad?

Funky is bringing syncopations and skippy rhythms back in a way that isn't just a retro fad. I never stopped playing 2step in my sets and agree that the music had so much untapped potential. You just have to look at the offshoots of UKG to see how powerful it was: dubstep, grime, bassline, funky… As usual, the offshoots don't quite match up, but when you consider it as a whole, as UKG, then that's quite an amazingly diverse yet coherent musical ecology. I don't really like the sense you get from some people that is OK to like UKG now even though at the time people criticized it as cheesy — it's like the way jungle got authorized retrospectively as a retro fad. But I suppose when you have musical singularities like jungle or UKG, it does take a while before its shockwaves can be processed into something that makes sense historically.

Your book on sonic warfare is soon to come out. I understand you've been working on it for ages. Will this be an academic book? How did you research it? It seems like much of the crucial information must be very hard to access.

The book is out on MIT Press in November. It aims to do two things: firstly to critically and speculatively interrogate the deployment of sound systems, the deployment of vibrational force, in the affective modulation of populations. Secondly to examine the role that sonic intensity, a kind of art of war in the art of noise, has played in the theories of aesthetic innovation, from futurism to Afrofuturism. The book zig-zags between quite dense theory and lots of examples from the history of military research into acoustic weapons, sound art, film, fiction and music. I didn't want to compromise either pole, so parts will be accessible, others no doubt won't. The book obviously could only draw on material in the public domain, but more important to the book is that it is speculative, and about the power of sonic fiction. By speculative I don't me futurological, or predictive, but rather some real, but neglected potentials and tendencies that are emerging in sonic culture.

Finally, I wondered if you had anything to say about the current scene's sense of place. My understanding of UK electronic-music culture is that it's always been very locally oriented. But these days there seems to be an unprecedented degree of dispersal, as the internet spawns globalized, virtual scenes (with "real" nodes in certain cities the world over) and as producers on the margins, both stylistically and geographically, begin swapping ideas and inspiration. Is location becoming less important for scenes?

In the era of Web 2.0, digital music culture allows international connections to be made that weren't previously possible. We know that and everyone has been harping on about it for the last 20 years. I still think, however, that the most compelling musics are not completely free-floating but capture the affective tone of an actual locale in parallel to any online dissemination. The problem of Web 2.0 music culture, which often gets overlooked in the hype concerning DIY music culture and digital empowerment, as I see it anyway, is how the internet overexposes music culture, breeding and intensifying a kind of fiendish hunger in everyone -- corporate marketing experts, brand consultants, journalists, bloggers and musicians -- to attempt to pre-empt sonic innovation, to get ahead of the curve, so that anything new that happens can be viewed retrospectively, and therefore its shock absorbed. What happens as a consequence is that the time gap between real invention and mass marketing approaches zero, or even inverts. That's why older notions of futurism are so highly problematic in the age of Web 2.0. I think the shadow of the internet will become an increasingly small but interesting place.