HYPERDUB - Hyperdub 10.2

Birthdays make for nice stories. Single days of euphoria that fade as quickly as ice cream melts in the summer sun. You barely blow out the candles before the alcohol's already in your bloodstream, your friends have gone home, and tomorrow a regular, dreary day awaits. It holds true for people as much as for institutions - because that's what Hyperdub is today, even before being a label: the time for an anniversary arrives, it's celebrated with the obligatory compilation and a handful of parties scattered across the globe, and then off we go again, back to "business as usual". As for the rhetorical question that goes something like "could someone like Kode9, aka Mr. Hyperdub, aka the man chiefly responsible for spilling bass music into sophisticated electronic music, ever settle for a single day of glory to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his monstrous creation?" - we won't even bother answering. For anyone who hasn't been following along, we refer you to the first celebratory gift, delivered in style, and invite you to freely interpret the little number following the 10 in the title.

A few months ago it was the trailblazer's turn, a double compilation collecting a glorious thirty-three tracks, half of them brand new and half dug up from the vast back catalogue, all focused on the purest expressions ("dancefloor-oriented", as Steve himself put it) of the gospel for which Hyperdub is, without a doubt, the centre of gravity. Keywords, zooming in order: urban, bass music, dubstep, and from there post-dubstep, grime, footwork. Geographic coordinates: London and Chicago. In short, one of the most complete testimonies to the freshest, most innovative currents in 21st-century electronic music. Now it's time for the sequel, for the party that doesn't stop and will keep going, between a string of showcases and two more compilations on the way, due in November and early 2015 respectively. And one of the main things this extended celebration underlines is just how much Hyperdub has been, over these ten years, far more than simply the label that canonised dubstep and cemented the triumph of all things urban.

"Hyperdub 10.2" shifts the focus, then, training its lens on the label's last five years of output and on its (as the press materials describe them) "summery" sounds. It's almost a way of saying: we didn't stop at dubstep and Burial (who's present here too), and anyone who doesn't know that should step up and enjoy our stuff, which you can easily listen to while sipping a drink on the beach. For those who've more recently gotten acquainted with the wave of artists (and especially female artists) with whom Kode9 has beefed up his roster, there's plenty here to sink your teeth into. In short, this is pop according to Hyperdub - a pop forged by turning the post-dubstep legacy to the service of the song form, flirting as much with early Uk garage as with the most exquisitely melodic house, offering variations on the canons of footwork and grime, and edging, sometimes quietly, toward parallel spheres like wonky and trap. It's a blend with countless different distillations, served here on a single plate in their most appetising forms.

Most of the tracks are gems from a songbook that isn't necessarily known only to the label's aficionados - which certainly puts this collection's value below that of the first volume - but the effect of hearing them fired off one after another on a single record remains priceless. Especially given the magnificent one-two opening punch: Dean Blunt giving voice to Inga Copeland (that's how they're credited, though the track could easily be filed under Hype Williams) as he paints his unmistakable frescoes on "Signal 2012", immediately followed by that masterpiece "Shell Of Light" by Burial, which trying to describe would be a waste of both time and words.

Curious, in any case, is the choice to open a summer-themed compilation with two such introverted tracks, only to then build, piece by piece, a genuinely sun-drenched arc: enter Jessy Lanza, first with the trap effusions of the sugary "5785021" and later with the liquid regurgitations of the less stable "You And Me"; the arms borrowed from Cooly G's grime, impetuous in the nu-garage-inflected r'n'b of "Obsessed"; and, bringing up the rear, the would-be popstar Ikonika, exuberant and playful to the point of danceability on her tandem with Dam Funk, "I Know (That You Are The 1)".

Then there's Leon Smart, the one who speaks every language going, the one with the broadest, most cross-pollinated arsenal: here he offers a two-part synthesis of his pop leanings, submerged up to the neck in house on "Solid" and ready to ride a mix of techno pulses, sci-fi keyboards and sudden ripples on the splendid "Just Vybe" (here in a remix by his friend Soule Power), which also features the lovely voice of Fatima Bramme Sey.

For a DVA who couldn't be left out, there's a Morgan Zarate whom you might well wonder what he's doing in the mix, given he's never hidden his love of the hammer or his hatred of mercy: and yet "Sticks & Stones" is Uk funky at its sickest, mixed with old-school hip-hop - the two Eskas are in there along with that veteran Ghostface Killah, and that alone says it all - while "Pusker Taker" is the real shock: four minutes of dreamy keyboards and slow-motion beats underpinning Roses Gabor's angelic voice. Not bad for someone who, on the previous compilation, had by far delivered the hardest track.

Closing out the parade of showstoppers is Terror Danjah, one of the great chiefs of the second wave of grime, who calls on veteran vocalist Meleka Ferguson to craft "You Make Me Feel", perhaps the glossiest, least urban track of the bunch. The one who, by contrast, stays utterly faithful to his gospel while showing its easy side is the late DJ Rashad, who, alongside his inseparable DJ Spinn and with the "European" help of Greece's Taso, delivers the juke pirouette "Only One", already featured on his magnificent "Double Cup". We've deliberately saved for last the two contributions from the label boss and from King Britt in his new guise as Fhloston Paradigm: the former settles for dropping the very brief "Lies Lies Lies", with Inga Copeland on vocals, which is there mainly as the boss's signature on the whole project, while the presence of the digital soul mantra "Never Defeated" amounts to a significant, weighty choice. Indeed, because the slot handed to the veteran (former?) deep-house maestro is exactly where everyone would have expected to see rising star Fatima Al Qadiri, lavished with praise by just about everyone but evidently unable to win over even the very man who gave her a leg up just a few months ago.

Another ten candles blown out, bringing the tally to twenty, and forty in total will have been extinguished by 2015. This time they're less bright, less warm, less fragrant than those of a few months back, not brand new, but their effect lands just as well. Summer (which, at least over here, never really happened) is heading toward its end (though who's to say it doesn't actually start in September?), and we're already here waiting for the third, penultimate record-label party, because when it comes to this, there's no such thing as too much. And between one dance and the next, here's hoping Hyperdub and electronic music as a whole get as many decades as possible, as fertile and full of novelty as the one we're celebrating now.

Ride the wave of great music

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05/09/2014