To offer a strained analogy, consider Kode9 the Peanut Butter Wolf, to Burial’s Madlib. The mastermind behind Dub Step dons, Hyper Dub, the Scottish-born producer named Steve Goodman receives less acclaim than his Mercury Prize-nominated meal ticket, but remains one of the most vital players in the drum and bass and dub-descended, sub-genre centered in London.
Like Burial, Kode 9’s music operates in a delirious haze, trapped between exotic Coleridge dreams and neurotic Kafka nightmares. The sort of stuff that only makes sense between midnight and four, alone, glancing at a maze of green and pink city lights, on Laudanum–it’s hard to get good Laudanum these days. Metropolis music, born from the claustrophobic strain of stacks and stacks of people and property.
New single, “Black Sun” sounds like its name would intimate: dying star-synths, drums that pop like flare guns, jungle rhythms jiving to a baleful beat. He’s playing the Echo on April 10, opening for Flying Lotus. It’s enough to make you wonder if mushrooms are kosher for Pesach–if you’re into that sort of thing, or are just Jewish for the jokes.
Boomkat: Kode9-“Black Sun/2 Far Gone]
Download:
MP3: Kode9-“Black Sun”
MP3: Kode9-“Magnetic City”
