reviews / 2009

AA.VV. - 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub

Name: AA.VV. – 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub
Item: 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub
Rating: 9
Author: Mattia Braida

2009 (Hyperdub)

Dubstep

by Mattia Braida

Kode9 is officially registered under the name Steve Goodman. I picture him wandering the streets of Glasgow, an ordinary kid from the outskirts with one great passion: electronic music. Which meant spending afternoons in record shops and nights dancing in smoky, damp clubs. It's the 90s, the years of rave culture, of jungle and drum'n'bass. Then Steve decides the provinces are too cramped and moves to London, where he keeps working as a dj. He brings with him his baggage of dance, reggae music and Afrofuturist culture. The new millennium arrives and Steve smells something stale in the air, whether it's turning thirty or the feeling that the future doesn't seem so exciting after all; the new millennium arrives, in short, and Steve, under the name Kode9, remixes a dub version of Prince's "Sign O' The Times": "Sine of the Dub" is Hyperdub's first official release. And so begins the story of the most forward-thinking label in '00s electronic music.

Burial is officially registered under the name William Bevan. He's much younger than Kode9, he wasn't behind the decks in the 90s, wasn't on the dancefloor or under the speakers at rave parties out in the English countryside. But he was in his bedroom, an ordinary kid from the London suburbs, listening to a ton of music. Electronic music. "All I did for a year was listen to 'Black Secret Technology'". In 2005 Burial's first single sees the light of day: "South London Borroughs" is a jungle ghost reincarnated in a dancehall that cuts through the cold morning air of London's streets at dawn. And so begins the story of the most innovative and forward-looking genre of the last ten years: Dubstep.

When faced with a document like "5: Five Years of Hyperdub", talking about all the stories behind its protagonists becomes unavoidable, even at the risk of sounding tedious. On the other hand, it's the music that's the real motive here, so it's only right to spend a few words on it.

Naturally, the quality bar is set extremely high given the sheer stature of the names involved: besides Kode9 with his Spaceape ("9 Samurai" is an epic track) and Burial, who shows up with the already-mentioned first single but, above all, with the splendid "Fostercare", we find Flying Lotus, King Midas Sound and The Bug, just to name the headliners. Around them sit countless overlooked gems ("Bleeps From Outerspace" by Quarta330) and new sensations chasing hype ("Aidy's Girl's a Computer" by Darkstar is a big favourite over at Nme).

It should also be said that, beyond the most classic Dubstep, "5: Five Years of Hyperdub" also makes room for all the offspring - legitimate or otherwise - of the London genre: from wonky beats to hip-hop hybrids, taking in along the way the more roots-leaning influences of urban soundsystems. Because that's what Hyperdub is too, after all: like a chameleon, one eye on the future and one on the past, with the present in constant flux.

"5: Five Years of Hyperdub" is the summa of everything Hyperdub has meant for electronic music. Across two discs and nearly three hours of music, this mammoth compilation distills five years of urban movements, of musical as well as social subcultures; proof that Dubstep was never just deep bass and ethnic flavourings, but also, and above all, a new idea of music and of coming together. Dubstep was the language of an entire generation that came of age at the end of the '90s, in a transitional period that, like all transitional periods, left people disoriented and without points of reference (not surprisingly, two of the most hypnotic traits of the genre itself) - a generation that spent five years incubating its own idea of music in a cocoon of dj sets and culture, before finally stepping onto the scene like the most spectacular of suburban butterflies.

Listening to this enormous record, I find myself drawn into a reflection that's both musical and social, but it also gets me thinking. Thinking about how, at times, the speed at which humanity evolves is genuinely frightening. Five years ago social networks were being born, with Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. Five years ago wireless technology was taking off. Five years ago the fear of file sharing was starting to loom in the wake of Napster. Five years ago a label was also born, Hyperdub, destined to radically reshape the face of electronic music: "5: Five Years of Hyperdub" is here to tell its story.

Appendix: Dubstep, a Matter of Rhythm

Listening closely to "Five Years of Hyperdub", you notice an extreme rhythmic variety: only a handful of tracks feature the pattern that defines the genre, the half-time beat accented on the third beat (tum-tum-TUM-ta). "Stash" by Joker & Ginz is nonetheless emblematic of how Dubstep, first and foremost, means the rarefaction of the 2-step pattern (a construction typical of UK garage: instead of the four kick-drum hits that define the classic four to the floor, kick on the odd beats and snare on the even ones, plus a healthy dose of shuffle). The percussion cycles, which in canonical 2-step span one bar, cover two bars in Dubstep.

What results is a sense of time somehow stretched out, hollowed: subliminally, space is created between the beats, a dub interregnum that makes the sound deep and hypnotic. And it leaves wide open ground for forests of sub-bass (sounds below 90 Hz, whose intensive use is made possible by subwoofers) and bradycardic rhythmic disruptions, offspring of both drum'n'bass and trip-hop.

While the placement of accents varies considerably across the thirty-two tracks, a constant running through nearly all of them is the presence of two separate rhythmic layers - that of the bass and that of the beat. It's this trait that marks the substantial difference from other strands of English electronic music from the '90s onward. Trip-hop too slowed down its beats, drum'n'bass and its offshoots too played with constantly shifting patterns and massive, dark, acidic basslines. In Dubstep, however, drum and bass move at different speeds: one phrase of the former lasts as long as two of the latter, as if a selective slow-motion effect were expanding and breaking down only the percussion's moves.

The English scene is dynamic, and Hyperdub's releases are especially so. It's no surprise, then, that the tracks gathered here display a rhythmic variety that goes well beyond the broad traits outlined above. The emphasis on bass, the jagged percussion and the "hollowing out" effect produced by the half-step metre remain, nonetheless, a distinctive feature running through almost the entire compilation.

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01/11/2009

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Mattia Braida, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Tracklist

Disc 1
1. King Midas Sound - Meltdown
2. Kode9 + The Spaceape - Time Patrol (feat. Cha Cha)
3. Darkstar - Aidy's Girl's a Computer
4. Samiyam - Roller Skates
5. Flying Lotus - Disco Balls
6. Black Chow - Purple Smoke
7. Burial - Fostercare
8. Cooly G - Weekend Fly
9. Zomby - Tarantula
10. Martyn - Mega Drive Generation
11. LV - Turn Away (feat. Dandelion)
12. Mala - Level Nine
13. L.D. - Shake It
14. Quarta330 - Bleeps From Outer Space
15. Ikonika - Sahara Michael
16. Joker & Ginz - Stash
Disc 2
1. Kode9 - 9 Samurai
2. Burial - South London Boroughs
3. Kode9 Vs. L.d. - Bad
4. The Bug - Honey Money Remix (feat. Warrior Queen)
5. LV - Globetrotting (feat. Errol Bellot)
6. Burial - Distant Lights
7. Kode9 + The Spaceape - Ghost Town
8. Kode9 + The Spaceape - Fukkaz
9. Samiyam - Return
10. Darkstar - Need You
11. Zomby - Spliff Dub (Rustie Remix)
12. Ikonika - Please
13. Zomby - Kaliko
14. 2000F & JKamata - You Don't Know What Love Is
15. Joker - Digidesign
16. Kode9 - 9 Samurai (Quarta330 Remix)

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AA.VV. - 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub

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