To attend a Kode9 concert in August 2024 is to continue the electro experience with a master creator and a master thinker.
Real name Steve Goodman, this Glasgow-born London artist has been creating forms and ideas for some thirty years. A Doctor of Philosophy, the Scot has published the essay Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of fear. However, his artistic output is better known, since he founded the excellent Hyperdub label and, above all, was one of the first designers of the dubstep movement. This was just one phase in his artistic career, needless to say.
What we were treated to on Sunday night was a conceptual universe where electroacoustics, film music and electro-jazz come into play in the groove of dub, jungle, drum’n’bass and grime, fundamental experiences in the UK.
In a context where rhythm is not continuous from beginning to end, Kode9 has chosen instead to present a succession of audiovisual tableaux (Lawrence Lek, Optigram, Bianca Hic, Mark Garlick, Plus Minus Studio) through which he illustrates his new sound treatments, very often based on rhythmic exploration, much on the insertion of random sounds, much less on the more consensual melodic-harmonic constructions.
All this is highlighted in a variety of contexts: calm, dreamy, dynamic, tempestuous, meditative, paroxysmal. The succession of these episodes was also in phase with inspired projections, whether of pristine nature or an aerospace launch pad, or the praise of Escapology, a kind of art of escape that is also the theme of his most recent album (2022).
There was plenty to feed on in this abundant offering, that of a superior intelligence, capable of varying its proposition and softening it, as was the case with his very good DJ set given earlier on the quiet Esplanade.
Photo credit: Bruno Aiello Destombes
