bass music/2 step garage/dubstep/house/techno/etc

The final of four installments in Hyperdub’s 10 year anniversary compilation series. This one’s focused on dance music. It might also be the most consistently great of the four in terms of end to end quality. A wide variety of rhythmic and textural styles, with new tracks (including a previously unreleased Burial track!) and old hits from existing releases. Also, all four Cooly G tracks are excellent, which is exciting because I’m a big fan and I was a little let down by her most recent album. But the whole thing is great, not a dud on here.


disc 1

1. opens with a couple bright synth lines, with a low bitrate almost chiptune feel. drums with burial’s usual shuffle and click come in, but on the mellower side. bassline has a growl typical of jungle, but laid back. nice dubby echo on the main synth line. very concise, esp compared to burial’s epic/multi-part EP work of the last few years. 3:28
2. opens w/ just punchy intricate drum machine breakbeat for a few bars, then something that sounds like a chopped up house piano comes in with 808 snares. breathy echoed vocals from cooly whispering the title and a couple other things. slithering synth flute line enters around midway. a bit of a digital soca feel on the rhythm in general. 4:17
3. cavernous drums with an almost-4/4 pulse. a melody built of pitched up chopped vocals enters shortly after. more complementary bright melodic elements enter around :50, then some claps, and it feels like things get a little more forward momentum. rests a bit as clanking cymbals rise. finds footing again and takes off with more clanking echoed percussion, and some squelchy 303 bass tones. cool/weird pitch shifting on the whole melody in the home stretch. 4:52
4. 4/4 kicks w/ no decay, and some 808 snare and cowbell accents. chopped female vocals (some with some echo and ripple). descending laser-like synth line comes and goes, as does squelchy/acidy/303 synth. one of the more straight-forward tracks on here, but not out of place. lots of warm texture. 4:30
5. steady clicking percussion, followed shortly by bouncing ring-mod something or other and steady shaker. ring-mod thing provides most of the melody throughout. bouncing kick enters just before 1:00, is mostly in double-time with some hits dropped or not quite in the right place for 4/4, but it doesn’t feel that hectic because of the syncopation with the slower stuff. exits on just the drums. 4:27
6. starts w/ a bit of squelchy static. blocky 303ish bass enters and static pares back but sticks around as a bit of rhythm. kicks start off 4/4 (atypical for kode9), but turn breaky at points later. static takes over mid-way for slightly menacing breakdown, then beat comes back in and mostly stays breaky. 3:10
7. aggro 4/4 kicks and static washes, male vocal repeating “position”. lasers in the background, along w/ rapid shuffling cymbals. other nonsense male vocal syllables enter later, some with some echo. then some woodblocks and truncated cymbals, and it starts to feel more shuffled despite the kicks staying 4/4. chiptuney synths in the background later. melody has a swirling feel in parts. darker and grittier than anything i’ve heard from ikonika in a while. 4:13
8. demented bouncing synth with steel drum texture, 4/4 kicks, snapping cymbals. beatless melody breakdown for a bit just before 1:00. intermittent cavernous kicks later lend a breakier feel to the otherwise housey proceedings, as do hand drums and other percussion. let’s call it digital soca acid house, if we need to invent a micro-genre. 4:46
9. probably the least floor-friendly thing so far, but could still work as dance music for the adventurous DJ. takes martyn’s shuffling, simmering, smothering original and makes it a bit less smothering, by re-stitching it with some glitchy IDM rhythmic tendencies and attenuating the bass just a bit. keeps the clicking bubbling warmth and squelch. adds a nice mournful synth line in the second half. 4:40
10. 4/4 kick, but the hits within each bar are tuned so it accents itself. other dubby echoing percussion keeps folding in, bassline finally starts entering just before 1:00 (mostly biased towards the low end, w/ just a touch of mid-range squelch). echo-y claps enter just before 2:00, followed shortly by a slightly brooding swirling synth (bit of an old aphex feel). echoed watery percussive interjections occasionally splash around throughout. drums get and lose some filter. other synth bleeps come and go. dub-house slow burner. 8:58
11. imposing knotty dense bassline, then rising synth melody comes in, along with some ticking cymbals. all bright and more than a little crazed. the whole thing keeps ratcheting up, and you expect those techno kicks to drop any second. spoiler alert: the beat never actually drops, but the slowly mounting insanity stays throughout. play graze’s “swarz” right after this and you’ll get ~6 minutes of mounting tension followed by ~7 minutes of catharsis. 4:32
12. bouncy digital tribal percussion, with a slowly rising bass wash in the background. claps and chopped female syllables enter around 1:30. techy cymbals and woodblocks come in after 2, but the bassline gets more prominent/bouncy, and the drums stay breaky. ambient pads in the background at points. the dark entrancing vibes of techno built onto a breakbeat chassis. no lyrics, so no FCCs, despite the title and the distributor’s warning. 7:05
13. dark 4/4 kicks with cymbals weaving around them, but still doesn’t quite feel like techno. midrange melody washes, bumping bassline that occasionally gets squelched out. cooly sings the title softly, not buried in the mix, but occasionally smeared with echo. 808 cowbell folded in for a while in the middle. squelchy bass breakdown in the middle, then stripped down beat comes back in over the last third. 5:00
14. shuffling distorted snares, hiccuping kicks, videogame squelches, some sort of short distorted vocal sample. bleepy mellow bassline. atmospheric synth pads in background, bleepy melody enters low in the mix after 1:00. synth strings enter a bit later, twitchy at first, but slowly smoothing out and smearing in echo (though the twitch version re-enters later). melodic videogame flutter towards the end. 5:09

recommended: 11, 1, 9, 2, 10


disc 2

1. opens with the grainy atmosphere, distorted vocals, and shuffling 2-step snare/cymbal interplay burial’s known for, but then the kick comes in and it takes on a pretty housey pace. still, it has the same rickety handcrafted feel that’s burial’s signature, not to mention the forlorn vibes. the title track off the single that marked burial’s move towards incorporating influences outside the 2-step/dubstep sphere. 6:44
2. galloping kick, weighty, but nimble, with no decay. warm digital synth washes. around :40, the beat really kicks in, some of the kicks get more weight, and a sort of moogy synth line weaves in. clipped male and female vocals play back and forth. breakdown in the middle with great depressing lyrics (“and yet.../this love is gonna tighten round your neck”). last half sees prominent female vocals and whispered male vocals. maybe my favorite kode9 song ever. i once saw mary anne hobbes spin this to a bunch of feral festival-goers at sunrise and it was pretty excellent. 2:59
3. bouncy digital soca rhythm, R&Bish atmospheric pads. lightly reverbed vocals from cooly g. lots of little clicky percussive elements added and subtracted over the course of the song. bright moogy synth line fades up in the home stretch. wish it were 5 min instead of 3. 3:08
4. housey rhythm with echoed tropical flourishes. bright echoed synth stabs. i think the vocal loop is a way slowed sample from an old house song that i can’t place because i don’t really know 90s house well. feels like it really gets going around 1:30. percussion gets a little breaky and off-kilter just after that, but w/o losing forward momentum. 4:55
5. clicking cymbals undergird the wistful synth washes from the original, along with plinky triangle hits. house beat kicks in at :45. breakdown at 1:50 with stuttery claps, no kicks, looped/chopped vocals from the original. beat comes back in at 2:38. vocal loops enter and exit throughout the remainder, squelchy synth line added towards the end. 5:18
6. weird fat bass kick and crunchy snares, some hissing digital synth detritus, and someone who might be really stoned saying “funky” in the background throughout. a little metallic clanking just after 1:00. never gets a proper melody per se. but there are enough atmospheric washes, percussive vapor trails, and random tones that it never feels like a skeletal beat. soca bounce throughout. 6:37
7. brief quiet FCC in the middle (“we’re fuckin up the scene”) opens w/ chopped repetition of the title. digital soca thing kicks in around :20. MC chatter, rippling hand drum runs, synth zips and bleeps darting around throughout. super fucking funky, esp in the last half. 3:41
8. opens w/ housey beat. soca accents and warm vibraphone hits. brief breakdown around :50, then off it goes. buzzy bassline enters around 1:15, exits and re-enters throughout. slightly longer breakdown just before midpoint, and beat drops out for a bar or two a couple more times before the end, last few bars are beatless. 4:29
9. stuttering not quite 4/4 kick, rising static wash, clanking metal, reverbed chirpy sounds. dark industrial vibes and rough textures. kind of like a techno song with a limp. mood and pallette remind me a lot of sigha’s work. some squelches and vocal cutups later on, feels more insistent towards the end. 4:01
10. just dramatic synth strings for the first few bars, gets some echo as things go on. 4/4 kick enters around :30, cowbell and cymbal just before 1:00. goes beatless for a while before 2:00 and it all comes back at 2:10. lots of thick sub-bass. very dubby construction, pretty much plays with that same set of elements throughout, adding, subtracting, and echoing different pieces. 6:25
11. as the title suggests, a bit of an 808 workout (though there are plenty of other instruments too). opens w/ big kick, one per bar, and a steady clap and shuffling cymbal. after not too long, a swirling synth line enters, followed by big squelchy sub-bass, some blocky 303 accents, and some synth flourishes reminiscent of 90s R&B. eventually kind of housey towards the end, but it creeps up on you. 4:37
12. chugging gritty texture with punchy kicks. swirling synth melody slowly rises up, along with atmospheric pads. little static flourishes foreshadow a squelching rapidly bouncing bassline that enters around 2:00. static gets more prominent later, and the squelchy stuff starts buzzing around more and more. disturbing sheet of alien synth buzz descends around 3:45 and dissipates soon after. weird new elements enter and exit like that throughout, some new, some variations on what’s come already. sustained tension throughout. last minute or two is beatless, but with synth melody and heavy bass flutters. 7:09
13. galloping pulsing kick and descending buzzing synth thing. bleepy keyboard runs. cymbals steadily tick with the kicks as the synths slowly swirl out of control. weird little buried vocal samples throughout, some from what sounds like a phone conversation. breaks down in the middle, builds back up slowly. is this the bizarro percussive twin of monophonic nightmare? 4:57
14. first :25 is relentless metallic techno, but then warm atmospheric pads quickly start rising around the beat. some of the kicks get knocked out of place occasionally, but it stays driving. beat drops out around 2:15, but comes crashing back at 2:40. watery piano loop enters after not too long, with plinky triangle (?) hits. beat drops out for a while longer in the middle, and the rapidly clicking/spinning percussive thing that’s been coming and going builds tension, along with more piano, warmer and heavily reverbed. beat comes back around 5:00. beat drops out and it’s all the atmosphere in the last 1:30. dj muscat described it as “what nostalgia will sound like in the future” when he reviewed the album it’s on. i’m pretty pyched to have this one back on the a-file. 7:35

recommended: 2, 14, 7 (FCC), 4, 3, 1