Escapology by Kode9

For Hyperdub founder Kode9, aka Scotland-born, London-based producer Steve Goodman, dance music and futuristic philosophy are inextricable, and their bond appears especially tight on *Escapology*, his first album since 2015’s *Nothing*. The LP serves as the soundtrack to Goodman’s evolving multimedia project *Astro-Darien*, a science-fiction narrative about British colonialism, Scotland’s history in the slave trade, and the future of space travel. Though those themes may not be immediately apparent in the music itself, there’s no mistaking the avant-garde nature of Goodman’s off-world fantasies. Where Kode9 has historically danced on the fringes of styles like dubstep and UK funky, here he largely leaves the club behind, teasing flickering stretches of footwork-inspired rhythms (“The Break Up,” “Angle of Re-Entry”) and then letting them dissolve in glistening pools of beatless, atonal synths. Rather than causing whiplash, though, these unexpected transitions only draw you deeper into the album’s labyrinthine dimensions, bringing Goodman’s imaginary world vividly to life.

‘Escapology’ - Kode9's first album since 2015's ‘Nothing’ – is the first audio document of a wider project, Astro-Darien, ongoing since last year. His most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, ‘Escapology’ is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction Astro-Darien, which will be released in October on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines. The music reconfigures Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics. ‘Escapology’ is just one entry point into of the Astro-Darien universe, which had begun to surface in 2021 as a two-week audiovisual installation on the main dance floor at club space Corsica Studios in South London, and as a multi-channel diffusion on the 50 speaker Acousmonium at the invitation of INA-GRM in Paris, the institution founded in 1951 by the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, composer Pierre Henry and the engineer Jacques Poullin.

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Come and visit the bass-heavy Scottish space colony Kode9 has created on Escapology – it's an unsettling place