Kode9

Dubstep, the London-gestated UK garage mutation, has been dropping the pressure for a decade. Yet it feels equally fresh with each new release. Ever-increasingly, overseas labels are setting the bass-line baseline by drawing the intimate connections between a ten-year gap of genres, from tech-step to tech-house, from inebriated ambient to...

By Tony Ware

July 2, 2009

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Dubstep, the London-gestated UK garage mutation, has been dropping the pressure for a decade. Yet it feels equally fresh with each new release. Ever-increasingly, overseas labels are setting the bass-line baseline by drawing the intimate connections between a ten-year gap of genres, from tech-step to tech-house, from inebriated ambient to Afrobeat. In an interview with UK modern music journal The Wire, Hyperdub label head Kode9 hinted he prefers building the crowd up through the music's sub-bass subtleties, avoiding the average DJ's impulse to overamp a club into an ongoing series of grunting deflations. So expect him to assemble a collective of rhythmic dread balanced by raw funk — mixing half-step beats and rewinding, deranged synths with irradiating melodies and phase-shifting circuitry. His sound pulses with the pitch-bent echoes of jungle, two-step, and Detroit techno. Dubstep's tendrils have even made their way to the Netherlands, where producer Martyn has added to the genre's syncopation of futurism and nostalgia on his recent full-length, Great Lengths. These selectahs — Kode9 with vocalist Spaceape, as well as Martyn and Juan Basshead — will haunt the dance hall as they commandeer the sound system in the White Room.

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