- As the tracklist for his forthcoming Rinse mix shows, a Kode9 set now, more than ever, is likely to be a dizzying ascent through tempos and styles, launching off from house into footwork and instrumental hip-hop. It's the latter styles that Steve Goodman draws on for his first single since 2011's Black Sun LP, abandoning dubstep and house templates to explore the 150-160 BPM tempo range.
"Xingfu Lu" employs archetypal footwork sounds—down-pitched claps, clipped snares, an imposing sub rumble—and delights in the triplet-over-duplet cross-rhythms. Goodman avoids cliché, though, partly through subtlety of touch, and partly by splicing these elements with his own trademark sounds—particularly those irradiated synths, pivoting between dissonance and consonance. "Kan" is bolder and brighter from the outset, its opening pearlescent synth giving way to a single tone that climbs over galloping sub syncopations. The whole thing ought to feel high-octane, but instead there's something oddly mournful to it, a quiet suffusion of dread that has always been appealing in Goodman's music. Plenty of established producers have tried their hand at the footwork recently; few, if any, have come close to the originality and deftness of touch that Goodman displays here.
Tracklist A Xingfu Lu
B Kan