Hyperdub
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Ikonika's third album Distractions'builds on 2013's Aerotropolis', and the title answers the question 'Why has the album taken so long?' In the last few years she's been building up a strong CV of remixes, from Chvurches to Dawn Richard, Austra and Junior Boys, as well as DJing and working on this album.Visit product page →
Distractions'distils the character of Ikonika's music productions across a wider set of styles than previous albums, and she subtly fuses and switches elements from contrasting genres, giving the whole set a uniqueness and consistency that puts it in its own lane.
Furthermore what sits at the centre of Distractions'more than ever is her love of R&B and hip hop, in all its forms, which has opened the door to bring in a selection of guests in a way she's not fully explored before. From the full throttle blend of grime and 80s synth soul Noblest'with Andrea Galaxy, to the reflective Sacrifice'with up and coming MC Jammz, a slowjam that merges dubstep with hip house drums.
The final vocal track is the languid Hazefield'co-produced with Sweyn J and featuring Jessy Lanza on vocals. Its mix of mechanic clunk and minimalist, lulling funk could only happen in 2017.
The LP artwork takes its inspiration from West London's Golden Mile, a stretch of the Great West Road where the A4 meets the M4, and the road takes on the character of the arcade game Poll Position, with art deco factories and illuminated, hi-tech signage selling lifestyle products.
It's this kind of mix of futuristic and industrious with a touch of gentle glamour that the album exudes.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Girlfriend
2. Noblest ft Andrea Galaxy
3. Manual Decapitation
Side B:
1. Lear
2. BGM
3. 435
Side C:
1. Do I Watch It Like A Cricket Match?
2. Sacrifice ft Jammz
3. Love Games
Side D:
1. Lossy
2. Not Actual Gameplay
3. Not
4. Hazefield ft Sweyn J & Jessy Lanza -
Visit product page →Ikonika is in straight up banger mode on this EP, possibly her finest release to date. Confident, energetic and tough, these tracks are made from solid tour experience and made for big room dancing. The EP is made with an almost 3D sense of contrast, and a brilliant ability to balance dusty old school sounds and shinier new ones and reshape them into something that sounds really fresh.
'Position' kicks things off with rough kicks and snares that sound like they've been created in a foundry, mixed into rolling kicks lifted from a crumbling drum machine and vocals sliced and diced into sharp hallucinatory rhythms. 'Praxis' sounds like a track that could have come from her groundbreaking 'Contact, Want, Love, Have' debut album, except the straightforward melodies with droning synths and steamy drums over growling bass give the track a confident upgrade.
'Strawberry Underlay' builds melody lines over a single basic, repeating riff in quick succession while a series of interchangeable, tight old school drum patterns stop and start underneath in quick succession. It's a brilliant exercise in dynamics and tension. 'Wakeup Sequence' sounds like freestyle pop driven into strange Atari game shapes, bubbling arpeggios, rough, funky melodies, ancient drum machines, and distorted guitar synth and weird squeaks.
A1. Position
A2. Praxis
B1. Strawberry Underlay
B2. Wakeup Sequence -
Visit product page →Side A:
Clapper
Side B:
Clapper (Traxman Remix) -
Visit product page →Jessy Lanza's debut album 'Pull My Hair Back', co-written and co-produced with Jeremy Greenspan from Junior Boys, is a 2013 flagship for what electronic pop could sound like, stripped of bloated, behaviourist impulses that treat listeners like lab rats. It's graceful and erotic without the gratuitous close ups, icey and sensual, sweet without rotting your teeth, emotional but with enough blue glow to pull your heart strings.
Jessy's voice flutters through the synths seductively, insistent without the over-singing and grating choruses that plague so much contemporary pop. Jessy Lanza has a background as a singer and skilled piano scholar, and the duo share a mutual love of collecting the old hardware synths and drum machines that grace this collection of songs.
Transecting R&B, house, disco and '80s studio rock, the production is immaculate, reminiscent of early Junior Boys, treading that fine line between cold futurism and the R&B that Jessy and Jeremy are infatuated with. 'Pull My Hair Back' opens with the bouncy, acidic bassline, plaintive piano and shimmering, delay effected vocals of 'Giddy'.
The ominous pitched down introduction of '5785021' gives way swiftly to a juddering pulse, insistent lyrics, bustling hi-hats and citric, crystalline synths. 'Kathy Lee' is a minimal, smouldering slow jam illuminated by smudged water colour keys, which switches into double time syncopation in the closing stretch, the song begging as many questions as it answers.
Jessy's vocals sound comfortably at home over the fluttering-pitched synths of 'Fuck Diamond' and the album's pop pinnacle, 'Keep Moving', where the tempo rises into classic disco, house and techno. 'Against The Wall' marches in with crunchy, metallic drums and a bumbling baseline, as the singer's sweet, delayed voice rides a line through powerfully contrasting gurgling, strobing synths.
The album's title track stutters in with carefree, implied S&M directives and sour splashes under an ultraviolet glow. 'As If' throws a curve ball as its rolling, martial snares and walking bassline climax in a sour, acidic crescendo. And the album rounds off gracefully with the flood of endorphins of 'Strange Emotion'.
'Pull My Hair Back' is bittersweet, blue and soulful, shot through with driving, fizzling arpeggios. It balances cold, machine tooled precision with Jessy's beguiling, elevated vocals and her more intuitive, impressionistic keyboard playing. Lean and deadly, it leaves you craving more.
Tracklisting:
1. Giddy
2. 5785021
3. Kathy Lee
4. Fuck Diamond
5. Keep Moving
6. Against The Wall
7. Pull My Hair Back
8. As If
9. Strange Emotion -
Jessy Lanza meets the Teklife crew on this sultry EP, with DJ Spinn and Taso's first-released RnB track, and a Teklife footwork remix with assistance from the late DJ Rashad.Visit product page →
The main mix is a dejected confessional slow jam with Jessy's plaintive vocal sitting in the middle of spiralling drums and teardrop-like chords, a gentle guitar refrain dropping in at the end like a comforting hand on the shoulder. Following an instrumental version, the Teklife mix doubles the tempo, switching the gentleness to deliver an interpretation that touches on tense anger, with the sweeping chords the track is built on snapping into shivering shapes, as strings simmer in the background, building the tension.
Also included is Bambounou's remix of 'Fuck Diamond', a track on Jessy's Pull My Hair Back'debut album, which appears here on vinyl for the first time after an initial CD-only release last year on the Hyperdub 10.4'compilation). Bambounou transforms it into a rough drum machine workout, leaving sparse elements of the original in place - a splash of vocal and a held chord - building a dynamic trance that slips and slides in and out of different patterns.
Side A:
1. You Never Show Your Love
2. You Never Show Your Love (Instrumental)
Side B:
1. You Never Show Your Love (Teklife Mix ft DJ Rashad)
2. Fuck Diamond (Bambounou Remix) -
Sold outVisit product page →1. Chasing Rainbows
2. The Chase
3. Lilloos Seduction -
Sold outVisit product page →1. Cool Out
2. Waiting for You
3. One Ting
4. Earth a Killya
5. Darlin'
6. Meltdown
7. I Man
8. Blue
9. Goodbye Girl
10. Lost
11. Sumtime
12. Outta Space
13. Miles and Miles -
Visit product page →1. Goodbye Girl
2. Without You
3. Lost
4. Earth A Kill Ya
5. Tears
6. Spin Me Around
7. Goodbye Girl
8. Say Somethin'
9. Lost
10. Sumtime
11. Meltdown
12. Earth A Kill Ya
13. Goodbye Girl
14. Come And Behold
15. Cool Out
16. Miles And Miles -
Visit product page →It has been five years since the release of kode9 and the spaceape's searing first album 'memories of the future'.
On this new recording, named after kode9's influential 2009 single 'black sun', the intensity and themes of their debut remain, but the delivery is more rapid and with greater clarity, the beats more jagged and restless. starting as a dense onslaught, 'black sun' proceeds to expand and contract its galaxy, sucking you into its orbit, and daring you to come and bathe in the warmth of its toxic glow.
Kode9 and the spaceape explore an accelerated sonic fiction with this album. Spaceape verbally conjures up a world under a titular 'black sun'; his lyrics intimating an unknown time resonating strongly with the present, after an unclassified radioactive event has transformed the planet, much of which is now on fire. Spaceape sends radio transmissions from this irradiated, scorched zone. his demeanour has changed. Kode9 has tuned into him on a different frequency.
Both formats arrive in high quality packaging. the heavyweight double vinyl set is housed in a dense board gatefold jacket, and digipack cd is accompanied by 16 page artwork booklet.
Lyric reproduction and illustration in the classic graphic novel style is inked by Raz 'Badawi' Mesinai.
Tracklisting:
1. Black Smoke
2. Promises
3. Am I
4. Love Is The Drug
5. Neon Red Sign
6. The Cure
7. Black Sun (Partial Eclipse Version)
8. Hole In The Sky
9. Otherman
10. Green Sun
11. Bullet Against Bone
12. Kryon -
The 'Killing Season' EP is the first collaborative release from Kode9 & The Spaceape since their 2011 album 'Black Sun'.Visit product page →
The lyrical themes explored on The Spaceape's 2012 Haitian-inspired EP 'Xorcism' are expanded. The emotional, spiritual and psychological effects of living with illness and the "unknown" are dissected wryly, but often with unforgiving brutality, in this new batch of songs. 'Chasing A Beast', depicts a nightmarish scenario where the cards are clearly stacked, culminating with our character's nemesis, "..a white magic woman" offering "..a gun or a knife". 'Devil Is A Liar', spits in the eye of those who live in fear of "burning in hell". "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". 'Heart' unhooks the life support and strips back the beats onto which The Spaceape grieves for this "vital organ", languidly delivering a litany of deceit and betrayal perpetrated by our "souls sacred ghetto". 'Pictures On The Wall' wryly paints its own picture of the stasis one finds oneself in, as images stare back, depicting a world far from their own.
Finally, 'Autumn Has Come' maps the body onto a decaying city as winter approaches. Under the strain of impairment, the city still glimmers in sunlight, defiantly looking ahead to the change in season despite growing uncertainty.
Side A:
1. Chasing A Beast
2. Devil Is A Liar
Side B:
1. Heart
2. Pictures On The Wall
3. Autumn Has Come -
Sold outVisit product page →Black vinyl repress of Kode9 & The Spaceape's 2006 debut album, including previously unreleased extra track 'Stalker (alt edit)'.
Side A:
1. Glass
2. Victims
3. Backward
4. Nine
Side B:
1. Curious (Feat. Miss Haptic)
2. Portal
3. Addiction
4. Sine Side Three
5. Correction
6. Kingstown
7. Nine Samurai
8. Bodies Side Four
9. Lime
10. Quantum
11. Stalker (Alt Edit) -
Sold outIn late 2017 Hyperdub released Diggin In The Carts', a compilation put together by Nick Dwyer and Kode9 of pioneering and rare Japanese video game music from the 1980s and 1990s.Visit product page →
Since then, from Sonar Festival in Barcelona to Liquid Rooms in Tokyo, Kode9 has been touring a live audio-visual set in collaboration with visuals from anime legend Koji Morimoto, who also designed the artwork for the original compilation.Finally, on this first new Kode9 EP since 2014, a handful of these remixes see the light of day.
9 rivets his 80/160bpm rhythms onto these classic 8bit and 16bit melodies, re-animating the Steve Reich-ian arpeggios of Soshi Hosoi, the grimelike horn fanfares of Yuzo Koshiro, the sour pads of Koichi Ishaibashi, and pitching Tadahiro Nitta down into a slow building, frantic low end grind.
Sleeved in artwork by Konx-om-Pax, adapted from the visuals from the live A/V performance.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Soshi Hosoi - Mister Diviner [The Mahjong Touhaiden] Kode9 Remix
2. Koichi Ishibashi - Bad Data [Dezaemon] Kode9 Remix
Side B:
3. Yuzo Koshiro - Temple [Actraiser] Kode9 Remix
4. Tadahiro Nitta - An-Un (Ominous Clouds) [Xak II] Kode9 Remix
Release Date: 03/05/2019 -
Kode9's most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, ‘Escapology’ is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction ‘Astro-Darien’, itself soon to be released on Hyperdub sub-label Flatlines.Visit product page →
Already available as a special edition CD and digital album, we now offer a 1000 piece limited pressing on lucent orange vinyl, in spot-gloss sleeve with additional artwork by Optigram.
‘Escapology’ reconfigures ‘Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics.
“A record brimming with ideas and novel sounds, departing from genre exercises to offer something genuinely different.” - Album of the Month -DJ Mag
“[Kode9’s] most dextrous and intuitive club music yet, full of mind-bending rhythmic nuggets. He's still the brilliant master behind the scenes, quietly one-upping everyone else.” - Resident Advisor
“The 15 tracks become proper dancefloor scorchers … ‘Escapology’ builds a futuristic jumble of aesthetics and sound design.” - The Wire
Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Trancestar North
2. The Break Up
3. Toxic Foam
4. Orbex
5. Angle Of Re-Entry
6. Freefall
7. In The Shadow Of Ben Hope
8. Sim-Darien
Side B
9. Cross The Gap
10. Uncoil
11. Astro-Darien
12. Lagrange Point
13. Docking
14. Torus
15. T-Divine -
Nothing' is Kode9's first solo album, and is about nothing.Visit product page →
The album throws horror soundtracks, sampled library and j-pop records into a no man's land between grime, early dubstep and Chicago footwork. Mostly instrumental, it zigzags between hypnotic, downcast loops, growling drones, and jagged cut-ups of androids gone haywire, threaded through twitchy, transatlantic rhythms and sub-bass inaudible through your laptop speakers.
Building slowly, but more upbeat than previous albums, many of these tracks have more in common with Kode9's recent singles from the last few years than they do with his two previous albums with collaborator The Spaceape, 'Memories of the Future' (2006) and 'Black Sun' (2012).
Yet 'Nothing' is haunted both by The Spaceape's presence (he died in 2014 after a prolonged battle with cancer), on Third Ear Transmission', a communiqué from a zone of digital immortality, and his absence, on 'Void', whose spaces were originally intended for the vocalist, and Nothing Lasts Forever', which closes the album with a 9 minute silence.
Tracklisting:
1. Zero Point Energy
2. Notel
3. Void
4. Holo
5. Third Ear Transmission ft The Spaceape
6. Zero Work
7. Vacuum Packed
8. Wu Wei
9. Casimir Effect
10. Respirator
11. Mirage
12. 9 Drones
13. Nothing Lasts Forever -
A. Girl U So StrongVisit product page →
B. Take Me Away -
Sold outVisit product page →Laurel Halo returns with 'Behind The Green Door', a stripped back, rhythmic, and sonically absorbing EP. While re-injecting rhythm as the central focus, Laurel's compositional senses of elevated flow and ambient detail remain intact, harking back to earlier releases like 'Hour Logic' on Hippos In Tanks, and the 'Spring' 12" under the King Felix alias.
However, the rugged, minimal grooves on display point to a new direction and shift in sound; these four tracks are hardware-only affairs developed from her live set, built from a kit focused on dancefloor-ready rhythms, enveloping bass, psychedelic detail and lush harmony.
On 'Behind The Green Door', Detroit Techno influence from her Michigan upbringing shines in tandem with stylistic nods towards contemporary UK club music; at times cold, lush, sinister and elated, the EP is a meditative rush of exploratory dancefloor electronics.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Throw
2. UHF F/O
Side B:
1 NOYFB
2. Sex Mission -
Visit product page →In a few short years Laurel Halo has demonstrated an unnerving ability to question established idioms in electronic music. Throughout her body of work the Michigan-born producer has expressed musical representations of merged dualities; spirituality in the inorganic, space in the claustrophobic, hope in dread.
As a result there's something uncanny about Laurel Halo's sound - the sonic templates may change, but the challenging of divides remains. Laurel Halo returns to LP format after two critically acclaimed EPs with the driving, meditative 'Chance Of Rain'. Evolving from earlier works, it's a cerebral exploration of the intersection between rhythmic and ambient music, drawing together moments of movement and stillness, psychedelia and presence of mind.
On 'Chance Of Rain', rhythms melt with unpredictable structures, ambient drift and deep harmonic passages, while keyboard-based interludes reinforce both the far-out and contemplative aspects of the record as a whole. Halo's evolution as a live performer has directed her music's development in part, as the tracks on 'Chance Of Rain' are fleshed out versions of live hardware improvisations.
This LP is far off from the definition of a traditional dance long player; where tracks like 'Serendip', 'Chance Of Rain' and 'Ainnome' invite with infectious grooves, others like 'Oneiroi', 'Still/Dromos' and 'Thrax' invert these energies, revealing sinister potential in the process. Again Halo's knack for illusory detail and sound design shines, and another duality feeling emerges, this time one of unearthly joy.Drawing inspiration from the music of her home state's music capital Detroit, in both harmonic and rhythmic palettes, the music showcases freedom within metric constructs, and skyward optimism in the face of decay.
The album comes packaged with artwork created by her father, an NYC-born, Michigan-based visual artist whose work focuses on industrial landscapes of Michigan and the Rust Belt at large. The artwork here is an early work of his from the 1970s, reflecting the album's twisted, hopeful tone. 'Chance Of Rain' was mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Tracklisting:
1. Dr. Echt
2. Oneiroi
3. Serendip
4. Chance of Rain
5. Melt
6. Still/Dromos
7. Thrax
8. Ainnome
9. -Out -
Visit product page →
Laurel Halo returns to Hyperdub for her third LP with a fresh approach and a new sound. Routed out of the electronic abstraction of 2015's In Situ - but with clear reference to 2012's sleeper-hit Quarantine - Dust is an album revolving around loose and languid songs; warped, sun-filled, melted and at times, heavy-hearted and obscure.
Recorded over a period of two years, the writing process began at EMPAC in upstate New York in January 2015. With access to microphones, percussion, keys and a wide range of routings, Laurel spent days alone in the cavernous space, later inviting musicians Eli Keszler and Lafawndah to join her there.
Those sessions would eventually become this album: a collection of breezy, broken songs, based on woody instrumentation, sub bass and restless, intricate electronics. Earnest songwriting meets with modal cut-up strategies, improvisational playing with higrade digital dust. Tactile and fibrous throughout the record, the vocals and percussion coalesce and breathe life into each other. Swung grooves eddy and collapse; acoustic drums are warped into sensual, febrile melodies.
The lyrics are themselves bricolage, without a specific narrator or place in time. They slip in and out of view, something that is visualised in the album's inner panel. Extending the influence, the album opener Sun To Solar'is an adaptation of 'Servidão de Passagem' by Brazilian concrete poet Haroldo de Campos. In line with the album's sound, Dust is 'Laurel Halo' as a flexible cast of characters.
Filled with dialogue, the album helms an interchangeable ensemble of vocalists and musicians, featuring vocals from Klein, Lafawndah, and Michael Salu, as well as musicians such as Eli Keszler, Craig Clouse ($hit and $hine), Julia Holter, Max D, Michael Beharie and Diamond Terrifier.
Laurel's omnivorous influences play out in mutated fashion - coalesced, unfettered and inclusive - a broad musical palette free from entrenched modes, catalysed by digital production that could only happen in 2017.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1.Sun to Solar
2.Jelly
3.Koinos
4.Arschkriecher
5.Moontalk
6.Nicht Ohne Risiko
Side B:
1.Who Won?
2.Like an L
3.Syzygy
4.Do U Ever Happen
5. Buh-bye
