Kode9
Steve Goodman, known professionally as Kode9 (born 1973), is a Scottish electronic music producer, DJ, and record label founder based in London.[1][2] A pioneer in bass-heavy genres emerging from the UK's underground scene, he established the Hyperdub label in 2004, which became instrumental in shaping dubstep and related electronic styles through releases by artists including Burial and Zomby.[3][4] Goodman's career bridges practice and theory; he holds a PhD in philosophy and authored Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (MIT Press, 2010), analyzing sound's capacity to modulate affect, induce fear, and function within power structures.[5][6] Emerging from Glasgow's soundsystem culture and London's 1990s jungle and pirate radio scenes, Kode9's productions and DJ sets emphasize speculative sonic aesthetics, often drawing on science fiction and vibrational ontology.[7][8] His label's influence extends to sublabels like Flatlines (launched 2019), fostering experimental electronic music, while his academic background informed lectures at the University of East London and theoretical contributions to sound ecologies.[9] In recognition of his innovations, Goodman received the Innovator Award at the 2014 AIM Independent Music Awards, highlighting Hyperdub's role in redefining independent electronic music.[10]Biography
Early Life and Education
Steve Goodman, professionally known as Kode9, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1973.[11] He grew up during the emergence of UK soundsystem culture, rare groove, and pirate radio, which influenced his early exposure to electronic and bass music genres.[7] Goodman pursued undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he began DJing and engaging with emerging music scenes.[12] He later relocated to England for doctoral research, earning a PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick in the 1990s.[6] [13] At Warwick, his work intersected with cybernetic theory and cultural studies, including involvement in the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), and explored themes such as Afrofuturism, postmodernism, and cybernetic culture.[6] [14] This academic foundation complemented his parallel development in music production and theory.[15]Entry into UK Bass and Jungle Scenes
Steve Goodman, known professionally as Kode9, began engaging with electronic dance music in the early 1990s while studying philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he started DJing around 1991 with sets focused on rare groove, hip-hop, and hardcore.[8] His introduction to jungle came in 1992–1993 through pirate radio broadcasts, BBC Radio 1's One in the Jungle program, and a pivotal 1993 mixtape by DJ Hype purchased in Edinburgh, which captivated him with its breakbeat-driven intensity and sampling techniques.[16] [8] This period aligned with his first ecstasy-fueled rave experience in 1992 at Edinburgh's Chocolate City event, solidifying his affinity for breakbeat-heavy styles over house or techno.[16] From 1992 to 1994, Goodman ran clubs in Edinburgh, honing his DJ skills amid Scotland's nascent rave culture influenced by imported London tapes and soundsystem aesthetics.[16] A formative summer in London in 1994 exposed him directly to the burgeoning jungle scene, including early drum and bass elements, prompting him to acquire sampling equipment and experiment with production.[16] By 1995, he was immersed in London's jungle events, attending Goldie’s Metalheadz nights from 1994 to 1997, drawn to the genre's rapid tempos, heavy basslines, and reggae-infused samples that emphasized physical and sonic immersion.[17] Concurrently pursuing a PhD (1996–1999) at the University of Warwick's Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), Goodman integrated jungle's chaotic energetics into his theoretical work on rave culture, afrofuturism, and cybernetics, DJing jungle sets that bridged academic inquiry with underground practice.[8] [15] Goodman's relocation to London around 1997 marked deeper involvement in the UK's bass continuum, as jungle's formulaic evolution by the late 1990s led him to explore UK garage and 2-step rhythms emerging circa 1997–1998, particularly darker south London variants with sub-bass emphasis.[17] [15] This shift reflected jungle's influence on bass-heavy mutations, positioning him to contribute to pirate radio like Rinse FM and nights such as FWD>> (launched 2001), where garage's real-time innovations foreshadowed dubstep's bassline mutations.[7] His early productions, including the 2002 track "Fat Larry’s Skank," exemplified this transition, blending jungle's residual aggression with garage's syncopated bass, laying groundwork for his role in bass music's diversification.[15]Founding and Development of Hyperdub
Hyperdub originated as an online webzine in 1999, founded by Steve Goodman under his alias Kode9 to document and analyze developments in UK bass music, including garage and jungle derivatives.[3] In 2004, encouraged by electronic producer Kevin Martin (The Bug), Goodman transformed it into a record label, with the debut release being the 10-inch single "Sine of the Dub / Stalker" by Kode9 and vocalist The Spaceape.[15][3] This output drew from dubstep's formative elements, blending low-end frequencies, half-time rhythms, and atmospheric dread rooted in London's club culture.[18] The label's early catalog emphasized experimental bass sounds tied to the "hardcore continuum," with the second release featuring The Bug and subsequent entries solidifying ties to the FWD>> nightclub nights central to dubstep's emergence.[18] In 2005, Burial's EP South London Boroughs (HDB002) became the third release, introducing the anonymous producer's rain-slicked, ghostly take on the genre.[3] This was followed in 2006 by Burial's self-titled debut album and Memories of the Future by Kode9 & The Spaceape (HDBCD001), an LP fusing dub echoes, grime urgency, and sci-fi narratives.[18][3] Hyperdub's development accelerated in 2007 with Burial's Untrue (HDBLP002), a critically lauded full-length that captured urban alienation through crackling samples and sub-bass pulses, propelling dubstep toward wider recognition.[3] By the late 2000s, the label diversified beyond strict dubstep adherence, incorporating UK funky, hip-hop experiments like Samiyam's Return EP (2008), and King Midas Sound's Waiting for You... (2009), which integrated global dub influences and vocal abstraction.[18] This evolution reflected Goodman's broader vision of "hypersoul" within Black Atlantic music traditions, expanding the roster to international talents while prioritizing sonic innovation over commercial trends.[3]Recent Activities and Collaborations
In July 2023, Kode9 collaborated with Burial on the split single Infirmary / Unknown Summer, released via fabric Originals, featuring Kode9's track blending jungle and footwork elements.[19] This marked a continuation of their intermittent partnership, following earlier joint mixes like Fabriclive 100 in 2018.[20] Kode9 maintained an active DJ schedule, including a performance at fabric London on March 15, 2024, documented in a 54-track mix emphasizing Hyperdub's catalog evolution.[21] Subsequent sets included live broadcasts such as at The Lot Radio on August 19, 2024, and C2C Festival on May 9, 2025, alongside a history-of-Hyperdub DJ set recorded at fabric in August 2024.[22] In March 2025, he delivered a special hour-long set for Black Rhino Radio from Bucharest.[23] These appearances underscored his role in curating club and radio experiences tied to bass music's experimental fringes.[24] On the academic front, Kode9 led a Sonic Warfare course at CAMP in September 2025, focusing on sound's cultural and perceptual implications through discussions and close listening exercises.[25] He participated in an artist talk at Stegi Radio on February 16, 2025, reflecting on his label's trajectory and sonic philosophy.[26] In October 2025, he engaged in a public conversation with Lawrence Lek at Goldsmiths, exploring shared projects like Astro-Darien and AI-influenced soundscapes.[27] Installation work included the 2025 collaborative project Fugue Zones at Canary Test in Los Angeles, which received the Mike Kelley Foundation's Infinite Futures Award for its innovative audio-visual approach.[27] Through Hyperdub's Flatlines imprint, established in 2019 for audio essays, Kode9 continued overseeing experimental releases, though specific 2024-2025 outputs emphasized label-wide explorations like Japanese chip music compilations.[28]Theoretical and Academic Contributions
Key Publications and Concepts
Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, published in 2009 by MIT Press, represents Steve Goodman's (Kode9's) seminal contribution to sound studies and philosophy.[5] The book examines sound's deployment as an acoustic force capable of inducing discomfort, threats, and atmospheres of dread, particularly in contexts of control and warfare.[29] Goodman analyzes how sonic technologies affect populations through vibrational impacts, integrating perspectives from acoustics, aesthetics, philosophy, and science fiction to argue for sound's role beyond mere representation, emphasizing its pre-personal affective power.[30] Central concepts include the ecology of fear, which posits fear as a distributed, environmental condition propagated via sonic means rather than isolated psychological states, influencing urban control, military tactics, and media.[31] Goodman introduces sonic warfare as a framework encompassing non-lethal acoustic weapons, crowd dispersal technologies like the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), and subtler ambient manipulations, critiquing their ontological basis in vibration as a fundamental medium of power.[32] Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's notions of war machines and affect, he develops vibrational ontology, viewing reality as composed of sonic intensities and rhythms that precede and exceed human perception, with the rhythmachine concept describing machinic assemblages that synchronize bodies through repetitive sonic patterns for modulation and capture.[33] Goodman's work extends to critiques of auditory culture, advocating a materialist approach to sound that prioritizes its ecological and political dimensions over anthropocentric listening models.[34] While primarily theoretical, these ideas inform his curatorial and musical practices, linking abstract philosophy to concrete sonic experiments in bass-heavy genres.[35] The publication has influenced sound studies by shifting focus toward ontology and affect, though some critiques note its dense abstraction may limit accessibility for empirical analysis of specific technologies.[36]Influences from Philosophy and Science Fiction
Steve Goodman's philosophical work, particularly in his 2009 book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, draws heavily from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concepts of affect, vibration, and non-representational ontology, adapting their framework from A Thousand Plateaus to analyze sound as a modulator of fear and control in contemporary warfare and urban environments.[32][31] This influence extends to Goodman's exploration of sound's capacity to produce ecological effects beyond human perception, echoing Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on intensities and assemblages rather than static structures.[37] Spinoza's monism, mediated through Deleuze and Guattari, further informs Goodman's vibrational ontology, positing sound as a propagating force within a unified field of affect.[32] Goodman's time at the University of Warwick in the 1990s, where he pursued a PhD in philosophy, exposed him to cybernetic culture, postmodernism, and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a collective blending philosophy, technology, and occultism that shaped his views on accelerationism and temporal disruption.[14] The CCRU's interest in chaos theory, cybernetics, and hyper-capitalist futures influenced Goodman's conceptualization of music genres like jungle as vectors for global rhythmic circulation and speculative futures, aligning with accelerationist ideas of intensifying technological processes to rupture existing orders.[6][12] This philosophical lineage manifests in his productions and writings, where sound design anticipates nonhuman temporalities, as seen in collaborations evoking cybernetic feedback loops.[38] In science fiction, Goodman employs "sonic fiction" as a method to construct alternative histories and futures, drawing from speculative narratives to critique colonialism and technological dependency, as in his 2021 project Astro-Darien, which reimagines Scottish imperial failures through a sci-fi lens of interstellar migration and AI governance.[14][39] His album Escapology (2022), accompanying this work, incorporates sci-fi elements like AI voices and machine-generated textures to evoke escape from historical traps, reflecting influences from cyberpunk's fusion of technology and dystopia.[16][40] These SF integrations stem from CCRU's engagement with genre fiction as hyperstition—ideas that make themselves real—allowing Goodman to blend Afrofuturist themes with speculative critiques of nationalism and capitalism.[12][14]Musical Output
Production Style and Techniques
Kode9's production style emphasizes sub-bass frequencies, sparse arrangements, and atmospheric sound design, drawing from jungle, garage, and early dubstep influences to create mutable, futuristic bass music. He typically begins tracks with melodic elements, such as those generated on a melodica and recorded via MIDI, before layering heavy sub-bass and effects.[17] This approach prioritizes rhythmic half-steps and minimal percussion, as heard in tracks like "Backward" (2006), which maintains dancefloor energy through slow, bass-driven pulses despite sparse drums.[17] In software, Goodman employs tools like Reason and Logic Audio—having earlier used FruityLoops—for constructing bass-heavy compositions, often favoring dubplate cuts on vinyl to capture authentic low-end response in club environments.[17] Collaborations with The Spaceape exemplify iterative experimentation: elements like samples, synth riffs, and manipulated vocals (processed for radio-transmission effects) were tested in live "Bass Fiction" sets starting around 2004, evolving over months through swaps of basslines and improvised lines until tracks cohered, as on Memories from the Future (2006).[41] Early pieces like "Sine of the Dub" (2003) eschew beats entirely, relying on vocal effects and bass mutations for tension.[17] His solo album Nothing (2015) shifts toward conceptual absences—evoking quantum voids and sci-fi automation—through powerful silences, vacuum-like textures, and solo-engineered electronic elements, such as the track "Nøtel," which simulates a depopulated luxury space.[6] Recent output incorporates sonic fiction and synthetic voices in audio essays, like Astro-Darien (2023), designed for 50-speaker diffusion to enhance spatial immersion, while exploring genre peripheries in footwork and juke tempos for rhythmic syncopation.[8] These techniques reflect a consistent focus on affective tonalities and bass as a transformative force, avoiding rigid genre constraints.[42]DJing and Live Performances
Kode9 began DJing in the early 1990s at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, playing rare groove, psychedelic jazz, and funk.[15] In 1993, after relocating to England for PhD studies at the University of Warwick, his focus shifted to jungle music, attracted by its rapid tempos and sampling techniques.[15][17] By the late 1990s, he moved to London, engaging with UK garage and 2-step scenes, and started performing on pirate and internet radio while DJing at pivotal club nights like FWD>>.[15][17] His initial sets featured sparse, bass-dominant structures with extreme frequency contrasts—highs and lows devoid of midrange—reflecting jungle's influence.[15] As dubstep emerged in the early 2000s, Kode9's performances at venues such as Plastic People and events including DMZ helped shape the genre's sound system demands and global spread.[17][43] He collaborated with vocalist The Spaceape for live acts, notably performing at the MUTEK festival in 2007.[44] Internationally, he built a reputation through persistent gigs, often to small audiences, before dubstep's breakthrough around 2005-2006.[17] Key sets include a 2014 Boiler Room tribute to DJ Rashad, blending footwork elements, and participation in Hyperdub's 2014 10th anniversary tour alongside DJ Spinn and Ikonika across multiple cities.[24][45] Kode9's style prioritizes genre-spanning transitions, evolving from 160 BPM jungle to hybrid 140-150 BPM sets incorporating grime, footwork, and dubstep.[43][15] He crafts custom "connector" tracks, like "Xingfu Lu" (140 BPM) and "OK" (150 BPM), to link disparate rhythms, enabling fluid mixes across tempos without abrupt shifts.[43] This approach, likened to shamanistic mediation between sonic abstraction and bodily response, leverages digital tools to extend rhythmic phases and adapt to venue acoustics.[43] Later performances, such as those promoting his 2015 album Nothing, integrated audio-visual components, including virtual projections.[46] He continued touring, with DJ sets at festivals like Lunchmeat in 2021, maintaining an eclectic, forward-leaning repertoire.[47]Discography
Studio Albums
Kode9's debut studio album, Memories of the Future, recorded in collaboration with vocalist The Spaceape, was released on September 11, 2006, by Hyperdub.[48] The album blends dubstep rhythms with dystopian lyrics, featuring tracks like "Acid Rain" and "Jah Zombie," establishing Kode9's signature sonic palette of heavy bass and experimental electronics.[48] The follow-up, Black Sun, also with The Spaceape, appeared on June 3, 2011, via Hyperdub, amid the vocalist's declining health due to motor neurone disease.[49] Characterized by anxious, introspective themes and intensified basslines, it includes standout cuts such as "Black Sun" and "Void," reflecting a darker evolution from the debut.[49] Kode9's first solo effort, Nothing, emerged on November 6, 2015, on Hyperdub, incorporating horror soundtrack samples, J-pop elements, grime, early dubstep, and Chicago footwork across 13 tracks like "Zero Point" and "Third Paradise."[50] The album's production emphasizes glitchy, menacing atmospheres, marking a shift toward instrumental abstraction post-Spaceape's passing.[51] In 2022, Escapology was issued on July 15 by Hyperdub, serving as the soundtrack to the multimedia project Astro-Darien, a sonic fiction exploring UK dissolution and space colonization through synthetic Scottish narration and asymmetric club rhythms.[52] Featuring 15 pieces including "The Break Up" and "Angle of Re-Entry," it reconfigures tense, off-world soundscapes into high-definition electronic forms.[53]DJ Mixes and Compilations
Kode9's DJ mixes and compilations have played a pivotal role in documenting the evolution of dubstep, grime, UK bass, and related genres, often featuring exclusive tracks and rapid-fire selections that capture the energy of his live sets. These releases, primarily on labels like Tempa, !K7, Rinse, and Fabric, showcase his curation of underground electronic sounds from both established and emerging artists.[54] One of his earliest commercial mixes, Dubstep Allstars, Volume 03, was released on March 20, 2006, by Tempa (TEMPACD 005), mixed by Kode9 featuring The Spaceape, and comprising 28 dubstep tracks with short, high-tempo transitions emphasizing the genre's half-time rhythms and bass-heavy drops.[55][56] In 2010, Kode9 delivered DJ-Kicks for the !K7 Records series, distributed via Hyperdub, featuring 25 tracks including his own "Blood Orange" and selections from artists like Cooly G, Ill Blu, and Ikonika, blending wonky, bassline, and experimental electronics in a continuous 72-minute set.[57][58] Rinse: 22, issued on May 20, 2013, by Rinse Records, contains 37 tracks across house, UK garage, grime, bass music, dubstep, and juke, with three exclusive Kode9 productions such as "Uh," highlighting his ties to Rinse FM's programming history.[59][60] Kode9 collaborated with Burial on Fabriclive 100, the final installment in Fabric's mix series, released on September 28, 2018 (fabric200), a 74-minute, 37-track blend of footwork, techno, UK bass, and jungle elements from obscure and international producers, underscoring both artists' influence on esoteric electronic subcultures.[61][62]| Title | Year | Label (Catalog) | Track Count | Key Genres |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubstep Allstars, Volume 03 | 2006 | Tempa (TEMPACD 005) | 28 | Dubstep[55] |
| DJ-Kicks | 2010 | !K7 / Hyperdub | 25 | Bassline, Wonky, Experimental[57] |
| Rinse: 22 | 2013 | Rinse | 37 | Grime, UK Garage, Juke[59] |
| Fabriclive 100 (with Burial) | 2018 | Fabric (fabric200) | 37 | Footwork, Techno, Jungle[61] |