Kode9 is one of the single most influential people in dance music context, thanks to his expansive DJ sets, his flagship label Hyperdub, or his own productions. His A&R abilities alone-- finding and encouraging Burial, Zomby, King Midas Sound, Ikonika, LV, Cooly G, and nearly half a dozen more-- suggests he has rare and consistently accurate vision. As a DJ he also sets the bar for many of his peers, so the arrival of his second studio mix CD-- a volume for !K7's DJ-Kicks-- is no small event.
His first mix was Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 3, released in 2006 in what felt like a very different era. Back then his vision was much more singular, finding the space between dark, synth-lead dubstep and grime instrumentals, interlocked with a raft of bassy DMZ dubplates. Dubstep was just showing the signs of growth to suggest that it wasn't going to remain the tiny niche community it had been for six years.
Fast forward to 2010 and Kode's vision is far more expansive. "I just wanted to do a snapshot of some of my sets from the last year and the range of music I've been playing," he explains. "Once I'd put the tracklist together, I realized it was a bit tense, so I added the interlude in the middle for a bit of fresh air."
As the interlude suggests, it's a mix with different phases and tempo plateaus, yet it is eclectic without falling into jumbled, aimless "anything goes" freestyling. The first half is quickly-mixed UK funky and UK funky-influenced tracks from Ill Blu, Cooly G, Grievous Angel, Scratcha DVA, and Sticky alongside his own "Blood Orange" and "You Don't Wash (Dub)". It's an overview of the driving, percussive seam of UK funky that has proven such a revelation in the last two or three years, swinging the pendulum away from grime and dubstep halfstep plodding back toward danceable grooves without falling into 4x4 stiffness and techno-sterility. There's even a touch of dancehall and South African flavors, from Natalie Storm and Majuva respectively.
The interlude to which he alludes is a bridge of R&B and soul influenced tracks from Morgan Zarate, Rozzi Daime, and J*DaVeY, which hint at Kode's longstanding love affair with acts like Sa-Ra and his links to Flying Lotus and L.A.'s beat scene. What's notable about this diversion is if you look at Kode9's musical path over the last 15 years, from jungle through UK garage, dubstep, grime, and UK funky, they all are local, London-based genres, so it's telling that Flylo and Kode9's musical dialogue and transnational friendship was founded abroad and nourished by a shared international outlook.
"I met Flying Lotus in Melbourne, Australia in 2006 I think, and we've just stayed in touch," explains Kode. "He's got a musical vision which is rare and not just stuck in his own city. All the Brainfeeder crew are an amazingly talented bunch of freaks, and what is cool about the nights, whether the crowds like it all or not, is that, in quite a focused way, really anything goes."
Like his relentless global DJ schedule, the mix soon moves on, upping the tempos and building momentum. For some parts of this phase, he revisits some of the ideas of Dubstep Allstars Vol. 3, finding the synergies between low percussive dubstep (Digital Mystikz' "2 Much Chat" and "Mountain Dread March") and synthy jams (Zomby) or mid-driven grime (Terror Danjah). Also blended here is a very 2010 sub-section, with Addison Groove's pivotal "Footcrab", Kode9 vs. LD's "Bad", and Ramadanman's juke-influenced "Work Them" suggesting new energetic possibilities at 140 bpm, without having to stray into the world of wobble to generate an impact.
Overall it's a very coherent and forward-thinking mix for someone who recently categorized his musical surroundings as a full of "mini micro sub-niche[s]" and in a "holding pattern before something else comes." As complex and fragmented as this sounds, the suggestion that bass-driven music is currently fragmented seems accurate, so a broader question then follows: Is it impossible for audiences to be truly inspired and blown away by this "holding pattern" of "niches"-- in effect a long tail of smaller but collectively inspirational musical mutations-- or does that effect of being "blown away" instead require the coherence that only comes from one core larger scene, with unity of purpose and relative sonic definition?
"Well I'm not blown away by much to be honest," he admits bravely, perhaps a reflection of his famously high musical standards "Although I crave that fix, and that's what drives me to discover music that I haven't heard before, new and old. Most people that make music or DJ have experienced at least one musical movement that embodied an energy that was singular and that inevitably things get measured against, even if you don't listen to that music anymore or make it. Until that kind of singularity comes that reshapes everything, it all just seems like a fun, but an ultimately transitory mess to get lost in. The point is to create something fresh in the process of getting lost."
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