Kode 9 and the Space Ape – “Memories of the Future” (2006)

This is not an easy listening record. Queasy listening, perhaps. It’s a fragmented science fiction novel of a record, equal parts old Sabres of Paradise, the darkest of Lee Perry and the record that a lot of people have been wishing Tricky would get off his arse and make for the last ten years.

I made a few notes listening to this the other day as different elements snagged at me. Here they are.

Glass – five am chill – not a pleasant one – as the dope runs out and sobriety bites. Best thing Tricky’s released in ages
Victims – scary, sci-fi lurch. “Alien virus” snarls the Ape.
Backwards – an unsettling dub march, “One step forward, two step back”
Nine – short fragment structured by fragmented, time-stretched stabs “Nine days…” Lost in space.
Curious – has an almost r’n’b chord sequence, if r’n’b was played on a melodica and underpinned by clanking dub. “Maybe just maybe we can save you/maybe just maybe we can kill you”, rumbles the Space Ape comfortingly. “There’s a word” (worm?)
Portal – Something outside is scratching at the window
Sine – “It’s June/…and a rocket ship explodes yet everybody still wants to fly/some people/a man never happy unless a next man truly dies/sines of the times/maybe make a speech…” An uneasy pulse, distant reverbed bits of percussion, a solitary hihat. So much space…Best Prince cover ever.
Correction – Future Sound of London watery synth trickles cut into a sepulchral whisper about disease and infection. Speaker hiss in the background, Quatermass.
Kingston – dissects the kind of mentality that can kill for an ideology. “As day becomes night, so much of our space evaporates from sight.” Little scratches of guitar and an irregular field of cymbal bells
9 Samurai – a sonorous brass loop processed almost beyond recognition. More dub. The most Gza-like treatment, sounding almost crassly fully-formed after the empty spaces murkily delineated in previous tracks.
“Bodies” and “Lime” – the empty murk descends again, claustrophobic. Quicklime out of Edwin Drood.
Quantum – subsonic bass, the fullest, fastest beat on the whole record – i.e. motoring just beyond a crawl. SpaceApe actually seems to be getting almost a word in every beat or two. Leaves a queasily upbeat sensation.

Utterly brilliant.