Kode9 - Nothing

Pitchfork 76

Kode9, also known as Hyperdub label head Steve Goodman, always creates multilayered tracks that sound built from another era or planet entirely. From his work driving the early dubstep scene to the formidable rise and influence of Hyperdub, Goodman’s vision is one that is singular in its devotion to the connective tissues of electronic and dance music genres. In Kode9’s music (and littered throughout the Hyperdub roster) is a harmonious bridge between styles. His music is not without history and ideas, and Goodman openly embraces it.

The most complicated forms of techno and footwork are built simply, from the ground up, and on Nothing, we hear the simplicity of each component and how it all comes together to make the music that we love. "I’ve always tried to be open to the idea of music as transversal, as impersonal – like a cloud, or a virus that passes through populations," Goodman told The Guardian. "It might start with an individual producer, but once it’s out in the world – as an entity that’s inhabiting, parasiting, using human bodies as hosts – somehow it attains a collective intelligence all of its own."

Consider the unnerving pull of a synth that sounds like a dying insect working in tandem with piano on "Vacuum Packed". The track builds into footwork-light with hyper-paced rhythms and a cutting beat that is maybe the record’s most danceable moment. "Void" is a slow-burning and dubby wonder that contains empty moments where his former musical partner Spaceape, who died in 2014, was originally intended to vocalize. "Holo" is the record's brightest and most enjoyable moment, built on airy samples and a spastic beat that is difficult to forget. Nothing leaves you awash in the sounds of the everyday: The static of the television not turned entirely turned off, the lull of old appliances stumbling to stay on after years of wear and tear.

There is a precision and effort laced in his two previous albums, 2006’s Memories of the Future and 2011’s Black Sun, that clearly mark a singular producer’s craftsmanship. But on his latest work, this point feels more eloquent from start to finish. Goodman described this record as one about zeroes and about "nothing." In that same interview with the Guardian, Goodman said, “If replication and distribution costs are tending towards zero, this is one of the most important engines in the transformation of the music industry. We don’t know where it’s heading. ‘Nothing’ was like a little encryption key that enabled me to finish the album."

A quick glance at song titles confirms this trend, at least stylistically. There is "Zero Point Energy" and "Notel". There is "Void" and "Zero Work". And there is the album closer, "Nothing Lasts Forever", a nearly 11-minute journey through the noise of silence, a kind of John Cage tribute for the new millennium. Awash in static and the sporadic, indescribable clanging of the day-to-day, the track helps define the work as a whole in a clearer way than the songs before it. If, as Goodman notes, things are tending toward "zero," then this track is the literal manifestation of this idea. Still, there is value in the zero and value in "Nothing Lasts Forever". In the absence of music, in the zero, there is still presence, still sound, still something to hear (and even enjoy).