Memories of The Future

Looking back on Hyperdub Records circa 2010.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In 2010, I was one of the main writers for the now-defunct New Zealand-based music magazine Rip It Up. In the wake of the global financial crisis, local print music media was collapsing rapidly, but even as we hurtled towards the end of the railroad with no breaks, I was still finding ways to get cool things over the line. I put together an extensive multi-page feature on Kode9’s Hyperdub Records for the magazine that year. Thanks to Hyperdub PR plug Marcus Scott, I was able to interview Ikonika, Terror Danjah, King Midas Sound and Darkstar for it. I also got my friend Simon Wallace to write a guide to some of his favourite Hyperdub singles and invited Devin Abrams to wax lyrical about Burial.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction I wrote for the article: A concept which begat a website, which in turn became a music label, for the last six years, Hyperdub Records has cut a towering figure within the divergent worlds of weird underground electronica. Founded by lionised modern music academic, producer, DJ and general trickster Kode9 (real name: Steve Goodman), Hyperdub has made key motifs out of playing polar opposites with existing trends and always fearlessly diving forward into the next stage - relentlessly shaping the future and concurrently, being shaped by it.

In 2024, Hyperdub Records is now 20 years old. In a more favourable timeline, I would be in the process of putting together a twenty-year retrospective feature on the label for a cool website or magazine, but in reality, no one has approached me to write about this milestone. That said, I also haven’t had my shit together to pitch anyone about it properly. However, what I can do is share some of the material I put together for my 2010 Rip It Up x Hyperdub feature. Anyway, that’s my preamble. As always, thank you for taking the time to read, browse, skim over, or even just open this newsletter.

IKONIKA

Based in West London, Ikonika (real name: Sara Abdel-Hamid) produces and DJs jacked-up synthetic club music with an emphasis on subwoofer pressure, skipping syncopated rhythms and swirling digitised melodies. On tunes such as 'Millie' (off her debut album Contact, Want, Love, Have), menacing grime referencing drum rhythms are submerged in 8-bit synthesisers and distorted bass squelches to alien effect. Alternatively, on 'Psoriasis' (also off Contact, Want, Love, Have), reggaeton-style UK funky grooves serve as supporting architecture to hands-in-air rave keyboards of increasing intensity, emotional vehicle to dance-floor centralised musical euphoria.

Still only a few years into the professional DJ and production game, Ikonika got her start in music as a teenager on the drum kit, initially playing in garage rock bands. Soon losing interest in the form due to its rhythm repetition, she, in her words, "got into hardcore [punk] for the [rhythmic] structures." Concurrently a big RnB fan, Ikonika opted out of the band realm to make music on her own terms. As she reflects, "I wanted to make the music that was in my brain." With some software-based production experience under her belt, she collided with the emerging sound of South London at that juncture in time - Dubstep. During and after the event, the genre served as a catalyst for her to start buying records, DJing, and really honing in on music production. "I was looking through music, looking for inspiration, and some of the stuff that was out there caught me," Ikonika explains. "I was getting really bored of punk and metal and I was getting bored of hip-hop. J-Dilla had died and I didn't want to be one of those guys who just copies J-Dilla all the time; I'd just feel so guilty. Dubstep was something new, something exciting, and from London. I remember thinking, this is our music! So I wanted to do that, translate my creative thoughts into a dubstep context."

Connecting with Hyperdub via the internet, her unique soundworld emerged at a release-worthy standard, and label founder Kode9 went in. Debuting through a series of singles and EPs, aside from building to Ikonika's debut album, this introduction also saw her connect with Planet Mu Records and establish her own label, Hum + Buzz. More important than the profile shift and DJing touring opportunities this affiliation afforded, though, was the resultant mindset shift. "These days, I feel more like a producer," Ikonika says. "It is something I do every day now without having to worry about having a day job. Music is my life, and I do it twenty-four-seven. If I'm not making tunes, I'm seeking out tunes for my DJ sets or DJing."

With a complete immersion into sound, despite the obvious touchstones of dubstep, UK Funky, and future g-funk that permeate her catalogue, defining Ikonika's present and future locales is no paint-by-numbers task. As she concludes, "We're pretty much post-genres now... It's just the new generation of UK music."

KING MIDAS SOUND

A collaborative venture between mercurial London-based sound explorer Kevin Martin (better known as The Bug), Trinidadian poet, playwright, performer and singer Roger Robinson and Japanese vocalist and illustrator Hitomi (real name: Kiki Hitomi), King Midas Sound could be described as lovers rock reggae as filtered a retrospective fractal lens. A lens composed of divergent strands of underground electronica, modern dub, hauntology and beyond. On their debut album Waiting For You, King Midas Sound espouse a sound template which, while sharing emotional similarities with the works of Massive Attack, Tricky and Burial, equally takes its cues from the modern German take on dub music (i.e. Rhythm and Sound, Basic Channel). Roger steps away from his spoken word to sing in a register two parts inspirational and desolate. Kevin, an artist stereotyped as an aggressive noise guy, goes deep. And Hitomi, well, she does what she does. As Kevin puts it, speaking from his studio at midnight UK time, "Our goal was to make a very personal, melancholy record that addressed relationships, eventualities and intimacies... [This] intimacy was about broken relationships, both personal and global."

Kevin was originally introduced to Roger's work as a poet via what he describes as "an incredible spoken word recital," artfully delivered over an instrumental on a Chocolate Art Project record. This led to a meeting where, in Kevin's words, "we hit it off straight away," followed by a collaboration on Kevin's second album as The Bug. Hitomi, however, came into the picture following a trip to Japan, where Kevin was captivated by a female ragga vocalist whose music he heard playing on a car stereo. Discovering she lived in London when he returned home, he received an invitation to watch her perform at Plastic People in Shoreditch. As fate would have it, Hitomi was also a skilled graphic designer and ended up providing Kevin with some sleeve art for a record for The Bug project.

Calling her into the studio while he and Roger were in the final stages of assembling Waiting For You, some "off the cuff" vocal jams led to her helping them resolve the album's sonic and emotional state, in the process becoming a key member of the group. As Kevin muses, "I don't know. Maybe it was the flapping of the butterfly wing in outer Mongolia that actually caused it all. somehow it all fell together at that point."

Sculpting Waiting For You during a difficult time (as he puts it, "I wasn't in a happy place. I was living in my studio, with no kitchen facilities, no shower and the building was a hangout for crackheads"), upon completion, Kevin handed it to Kode9 casually remarking that he "should definitely release it." Kode9 initially took it as a joke eventually calling back to tell Kevin he actually wanted to put it out. When speaking on King Midas Sound, one has to wonder if that butterfly in Mongolia flapped its wings in a special spot more than once.

DARKSTAR

On their debut album, North, London production team Darkstar (James Young and Aiden Whalley) presents a subtle digi-pop world that defies expectations. The musical equivalent of a Philip K. Dick or Bruce Sterling science fiction novel, in their songs, crunchy synthesiser lines, ornate strings, soft piano and guitar parts are filtered through a twitching, static heavy beatscape. Aside from the majesty of the instrumental movements, though, another crowning moment on 'North' is the heavily processed vocals of their new lead singer, James Buttery. Sounding like a hologram, or perhaps a ghost trapped in the machine, alongside some of the more naturalistic elements, James Buttery's voice seems to represent the decaying remains of humanity in a world turned cold, hard and robotic.

Speaking via cell phone from London on a Tuesday evening, James Young, in that somewhat jilted way some electronic musicians do, explains Darkstar's back story. Having arranged together for three years, James and Aiden, in James's words, "Began working together while we were at university," where they, as he puts it, "started passing ideas back and forth between each other." Friends for a couple of years prior, they entered into collaboration with a shared language of interests and complimentary skill sets. "He was a bit more musically inclined," James says. " I was a bit more out there and electronica focused, the two combined created a great partnership." Pausing to think, he continues, "Aiden's classically trained on the guitar and is quite theory-based. I was kind of messing around with samples, sequencers and things like that. I had a set of decks and got into the keyboards and stuff like that."

Big film and film soundtrack buffs, while their music carries a decidedly cinematic feel, since their rise to prominence through a series of stellar singles on Hyperdub ("Kode9 emailed us to say he liked one of our tunes and we emailed him back, it was that simple, James says) their heavily digital music has become progressively more and more human, especially after the inclusion of James Buttery on lead vocals. When I ask James about this development, he makes a simple statement. "I suppose that was my doing. I wanted to go a more conventional route, and as opposed to just making vinyl singles, I wanted to get a career and some longevity for us out of it. So for us to expand creatively, it was important to start including a vocalist and figure out what is to come."

Based in London, a place that James describes as "a tough city which doesn't give you a break," Darkstar tap their interests and environment for influence, filtering their life experiences into song-based forms. "Our musical ideas are often kicked off by any number of things," explains. "Watching a film, going to football games, anything really, it's just got to affect us. Then we will push it in new directions... It's quite peculiar how we write." No more peculiar than their stunning music, though, this much is certain.

TERROR DANJAH

Raised in Forest Gate, East London, Terror Danjah (real name classified) grew up in a house full of music and records, the perfect environment to develop into a DJ who would eventually become one of the most respected underground grime producers of all time. As he explains, "I started DJing when I was about eleven... kids nowadays have CDs and mp3s, [but back then] having vinyl was natural in the house. So to play a record player, that was how you played music. I was the youngest as well, and vinyl was the natural tool, so records, and buying them, in the early nineties, [that] was [well] standard."

Marinating on the sounds of reggae, soul, house, hip-hop, funk and beyond, with the arrival of jungle in the early 90s, Terror became inextricably locked into the future development of UK bass music. Cutting his teeth on pirate radio stations like Future, Raw and Rinse FM, Terror picked up electronic music production through some mutual friends, initially with the goal of making jungle and drum and bass. As he reflects, "I’d made a million drum and bass tracks, then I made my third garage track, and it got picked up!"

Not a garage fan per se, after some prompting from associates of his, including fellow Hyperdub signee Scratcha DVA, Terror tackled the form, resulting in an association with a label called Solid City, early home to the likes of Wiley, So Solid Crew and Pay As You Go Cartel. Giving the music a hard-edged take reflective of his hip-hop, jungle and funk background, Terror was architectural in the birth of grime music, the genre that deserved an incubator for Dizzie Rascal.

Having since then obtained a legendary status within grime's internal netherworld, while Terror had some very fruitful years in the early 2000s, it wasn't until recently that he found himself positioned to realise his vision of a Grime scene that placed a proper emphasis on instrumental tunes and DJ culture. Describing himself as "kick-starting the revolution" and "at the forefront of it", thanks to a close association with both Planet Mu and Hyperdub records, over the course of 2010, Terror has, through several key EP, album and single releases, presented this stellar new perspective on the future of grime.

A consolidating factor in this resurgence has been his Hyperdub-released debut album (in a technical sense only) Undeniable. One half vocal track, one half instrumental track tracks, Undeniable sees Terrors weighted bass, tensely coiled drums and moody, atmospheric textures collide with fierce vocal deliveries from MCs and singers such as D Double E, Mz Bratt, Griminal, Laura Mason and others. Crunchy eight-bit noises orbit around g-funk referencing melodies, incidental sounds fade in and out of existence, and a rare balance between experimentalism and accessibility is achieved. Terror's sound is an inspirational one, his recent music has inspired some very enthused commentary from critics; and he loves it. "It's surreal after being unnoticed for ages," he admits. "But I ain’t complaining."

FIN.