Kode9
Black Sun
Release Date: Apr 26, 2011
Genre(s): Electronic, Pop/Rock, Dubstep
Record label: Hyperdub
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Album Review: Black Sun by Kode9
Great, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
“An atmosphere lacking in oxygen, scorched by day, frozen by night, continually bombarded by the dimly radioactive rays of the sun. ” Winding out like an unplugged turntable, so intones the sample library pivot at the middle of the killer revisioning of Kode9’s 2009 single “Black Sun,” a track that skirted the edge of Kode9’s spacious, woozy dubsphere to explore the dancefloor dynamics of UK funky. “Black Sun,” like (but more so than) its bleaker B-side “2 Far Gone,” leavened Kode9’s signature sludge ‘n’ dread with a peppy and uptempo trip across a blasted dance plateau in an ecstatic search for guzzoline under dying, shooting stars.
Based on rating 8.0/10
A dismal rain pours on a ramshackle village. Makeshift roofs buckle under the wet weight. A howling wind whips the tattered shutters, behind which frightened eyes gape and arthritic hands tremble. Pitiful fires dot the dark-grey streets. Hollow drums beat ominously. The end is coming. Then the ….
Based on rating 7.7/10
Dubstep's crossover bid-- whether James Blake's introspective fragility or Katy B's pop hybridization-- is starting to obscure one of the genre's initial strengths: the way it could transmit anxiety. The soupy low-end and skittering hi-hats of a 2006 Hyperdub side made the ideal soundtrack for a sense of encroaching doom-- whether it was Burial's affecting desolation or a bracing dose of Kode9 & the Spaceape. The teamup of Hyperdub's flagship producer with the earthen-voiced poet resulted in an underappreciated full-length, Memories of the Future, which shot chest-collapsing bass and gutter synthesizers through firebrand reggae.
Based on rating 3/5
Dubstep pioneer and doctor of philosophy Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, is also an impressive curator as boss of the Hyperdub imprint. The release of the 5: Five Years of Hyperdub compilation in 2009 felt like the closing of a chapter; since then, Goodman has steered the label through the British electronic underground while also carving out its own niche within it. His own music has also transformed: while 2006's Memories of the Future captured the nocturnal smokiness of traditional dubstep, Black Sun is more about richly textured, pitch-shifting synths and spidery rhythmic workouts.
Opinion: Excellent
Dubstep duo’s second LP hums with a menacing darkness. Adam Kennedy 2011 Of all the warped offspring spawned from dubstep's umbrella metamorphosis, Scottish-born producer Steve ‘Kode9’ Goodman and cerebral pal Stephen ‘The Spaceape’ Gordon stand tall at the very scalpel-sharp edge of its boundary-slashing evolution. And with second album Black Sun – arriving a full five years since standard-setting debut Memories of the Future – they effortlessly breach the stratosphere once more.