It’s 2003. Dubstep isn’t a thing yet, though Ammunition Promotions births the term in the previous year. I get an invite from Kode9 to the launch of his label at Plastic People, the Curtain Road club that would become the spiritual home of the weekly FWD>> sessions. The afternoon event was a double launch: Kode9’s new label, and a new book from Daddi Gee’s (soon to become The Spaceape) wife, another of my university tutors.

Sitting on the floor of Plastic, Daddi Gee read extracts from the book in his thick patois over a bedding of sub frequencies designed by Steve. Looking back it’s a surreal image, yet also appropriate to Hyperdub’s resistance to pigeonholing. Hyperdub’s birth that night gave a hint of its creative growth and trajectory, even if it was impossible for me to predict it then.

I walked out with a 10″ record, the first pressing of HYP001 before its official issue a year later. ‘Stalker’ was never my jam, though I love the idea of a Junior Boys sample being used for a 2step number. ‘Sine Of The Dub’ was the one for me, a cyberpunk-­like version of a Prince classic that defied most of what I understood as dance music by that point. It’s not the music on the record I cherish the most, though. It’s the white sticker on a black disco sleeve that features Hyperdub’s iconic logo, and proclaims what remains my favourite directive from a label: “doin it in your earhole”.

Kode9 + The Space Ape -­ ‘Backward’ b/w ‘9 Samurai’ (HYP003)

As dubstep begun to emerge as an agreed-upon term for the 2-step mutations emanating from South London in the early to mid 2000s (the music itself continued to “be water, my friend”: formless, varied, exciting), it was pirate radio station Rinse FM that would play a pivotal role in the music’s rise to the top, and best capture that excitement.

My most vivid memories of that period are of running around my flat in Ilford, fighting with coat hangers hanging out of my old stereo, trying to capture the Rinse FM signal. Kode9 had put me onto his weekly Thursday FWD>> show. I still wasn’t sure what it was I was listening to, but it was my window into a musical world that was solidifying just as my interest in other UK dance music was waning.

Like the majority of classics from that era, some of which have still never been released, ‘9 Samurai’ spent a few years on dubplate before finally emerging on vinyl through Hyperdub in 2006. Its central melody, re­appropriated from Fumio Hayasaka’s Seven Samurai Suite, encapsulates the label’s obsession with the Far East, the dark, moody vibe that underpins everyday life in London – as well as most of the label’s early output. There’s a great version of it from an episode of the FWD>> show hosted by Wiley, during which he spits on back to back dubs complete with hilarious one liners that best summarise the links between dubstep and grime, its close East London relative. 

Five years after its release, Kode9 allowed me to licence ‘9 Samurai’ for a compilation I put together with some friends, to help raise money for the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. He was one of the first to reply to our call for music. Not only did it help raise the profile of our work it was also one of the most fitting contributions, considering the songs Japanese roots.

Kode9 + The Spaceape -­ Memories Of The Future (HYPCD001)

Hyperdub’s first 3 years were defined by the twin axis of its primary, and only – aside from an early appearance by The Bug on 002 – artists: Kode9 + The Spaceape and Burial. While Burial’s debut was rippling out of the dubstep scene, it was the debut from the label’s founder that resonated deepest with me.

If ‘Sine Of The Dub’ was a cyberpunk version of Prince, a short story, then Memories Of The Future was the duo’s Neuromancer, their sci-fi opus. It soundtracked my departure from Europe in late 2006 and my first year in Japan; an alien land and spiritual home. Over repeated listens, I discovered an album rich with meaning. Minimal production combined with an otherworldly voice, lyrics with layers of meaning, a physicality too often pastiched. All of this at a time when the music it was most closely associated with sonically had begun to lose its formless magic, and settled towards inevitable codification.

As the album opener ‘Glass’ proclaims: “It’s the beginning not the end that we have to reach last”. When all is said and done, when Hyperdub is no longer, I will keep going back to the beginning.

LV feat. Errol Bellot ­- ‘Globetrotting’ b/w ‘Takeover (dub)’ (HBD005)

It’s 2007, and dubstep is one of the hottest properties in the dance music world. It’s been more than a year since Dubstep Warz, the Mary Ann Hobbes-presented show that popularised the sound around the world. Spain’s Go! Magazine puts Kode9 on the cover with a promo mix CD ahead of his appearance at Sonar, one of the first major festival to celebrate this “new London sound”. That mix remains one of the best documents of the vitality still to be found in dubstep at this crucial point in its history; a vitality that would continue to diminish in years to come, leading Hyperdub (and its founder) to increasingly distance itself from the music that arguably made it famous.

LV’s ‘Globetrotting’ is the first track in the mix and like other favourites from the label’s catalogue, it was the repeated abuse I submitted the mix to that engraved the song into my head and heart. It’s a dub song, and it does its thing with a precision and accuracy that remain a trademark of the Londoners behind it. 

The Bug ft. Flowdan and Killa P ­- ‘Skeng’ b/w ‘Skeng (Kode9 remix)’ (HBD006)

It’s July 2007 and Steve lands in Japan for his first tour of the country, coinciding with Kevin Martin’s (aka The Bug) own. By this point, The Bug’s ‘Skeng’ had been doing the rounds on dubplate. Its devastating blend of dubstep’s sub pressure and grime’s vocal ferocity making it a favourite at Back To Chill, the monthly dubstep party Goth Trad had started in Tokyo which I was lucky enough to be a part of during its first year and a half.

The track became the tour’s unofficial anthem, spawning the kind of bad jokes that are only funny in the moment and to those who partake in them. During a day off in Kyoto though, the jokes turned into something much more real. Steve and Kevin began asking random Japanese people -­ schoolgirls, cab drivers, monks ­- to say the words “Skeng”, “Kode9” and “The Bug” into a recorder.

Two weeks later, after Steve had returned to England, I got an email. In it was the Kode9 remix of ‘Skeng’ – which starts with 50 seconds of Japanese people awkwardly speaking the name of the track and its artists. My voice is among those, at the 42 seconds mark, shouting back at a cab driver, and the person reciting the “You don’t want to see me get evil” line is Goth Trad, recorded during the tour’s farewell dinner.

Quarta330 -­ ‘Sunset Dub’ b/w ‘9 Samurai (Quarta330 remix)’ (HBD007)

I first met Goth Trad in London in 2005, during one of his early European tours. Back then he was emerging from Japan’s noise and breakcore scene, and the early sounds of grime and dubstep had started to fascinate him. A year later, during the European tour that would lead to his meeting with Mala, and subsequent induction into the Deep Medi camp and worldwide dubstep scene, he showed me Quarta330’s MySpace page while explaining Tokyo’s chiptune scene. At the time Quarta’s page featured his remix of ‘9 Samurai’; re­imagining the bleak original through a bright, pixelated prism.

When Kode visited Tokyo in 2007 he met with Quarta and a few months later, the remix made it from MySpace onto vinyl for the Japanese producer’s debut. One of those rare cases where it pays to remix someone without their approval. Alongside ‘Skeng’ and ‘Globetrotting’, Quarta’s 12″ marks the beginning of the label’s global expansion, and its founder’s avowed desire to give the music what it thinks it doesn’t need. It was a desire that would fully manifest into Hyperdub carving its own, unique sonic niche amid an increasingly calcified dance music ecosystem.

Samiyam ­- Return EP (HBD012)

Something beautiful and weird – but also logical, in hindsight – happened in 2007 and 2008, as elements of dubstep found a kindred spirit in the beats revolution unfolding from Los Angeles to Glasgow; colliding thanks to a combination of sound system pressure, boredom with rigid aesthetics, and no nonsense parties that joined musical dots across MySpace.

There are two radio shows from that era, both broadcast in late 2007 via pirate and online airwaves, that best captured this collision. One is Kode9’s return to Rinse FM with Flying Lotus as a special guest, and the other is the first Brainfeeder Radio broadcast on Dublab, which would birth Flying Lotus’ own label a few years later. It was on these two shows that I first heard the Samiyam beats that would end up on the Return EP, Hyperdub’s first hip hop release.

I’d had a feeling at the time that Samiyam’s beats would end up there, as I did with Rustie’s remix of Zomby’s ‘Spliff Dub’ that would also be released on Hyperdub that year. There was something in the air, after all. Dubstep was imploding from the weight of its own popularity, and the short­lived crossover between beats and bass provided a much needed breath of fresh air; with its combination of angular rhythms, woozy synths and sub pressure. The short lived period when bass and beats became best friends remains a firm favourite of mine, and parts of the Hyperdub discography from 2008 to 2010 are an essential snapshot of it. Let’s just not mention “wonky”, okay?  

DVA – ­’Natty’ b/w ‘Ganja’ (HDB030)

Evolution has been key to Hyperdub’s survival and continued relevance, just as it has been the hallmark of our relationship. At the turn of the decade, UK funky became a stronger influence on the label. Just as with 2-step before it funky left me nonplussed, though I understood its relationship to the label’s roots and the music I loved.

Throughout its first decade, Hyperdub has remained one of the few labels able to make me reconsider my antagonism towards a specific genre or style. With 2-step it was Burial’s glacial approach that slowly but surely conquered me, and with UK funky it was DVA’s ‘Natty’ b/w ‘Ganja’. You could hate all you wanted on the simplicity and hands-­in-­the­-air fun of UK funky’s dance floor focus, but you couldn’t deny the innate funk of these two productions. As always, the sweet spot lay in finding the tension within a specific style, and exploiting it.

King Midas Sound ­- Waiting For You (HDBLP003)

One of the first things Kode gave me shortly after we met was a CD of audio and warez. Inside of the one folders was a copy of Rhythm & Sound’s classic w/ The Artists album, and a virus was passed; furthering my already vivid love affair with dub and beginning my interest in the dubbier side of techno, which would peak with the continuation of Rhythm & Sound’s template by producers like Pinch, Peverelist and 2562. When the album finally dropped two years later I was going through a bad break up, and Waiting For You became its soundtrack.

Musically, The Bug’s production took me back to discovering a corner of dub’s universe I didn’t know, one thick with sub and heady with vapour. Lyrically, Roger and Kiki’s words held me up, and took me to the other side. They were saying everything I wanted to but somehow couldn’t. The beats and bass nursed me. Albums you can relate to like that don’t come often, so it makes them all the more special when they arrive with perfect timing.

By 2009, the dubstep bubble had well and truly burst. You could no longer think of Hyperdub in those terms. In just two years the label had grown immensely, and this third full length (notable for completing an unofficial trilogy of albums by the label’s first three artists) marked a turning point towards a future free of stylistic shackles.

Fatima Al­ Qadiri ­- Asiatisch (HDBLP022)

In 2005, Kode put together a sino-grime minimix that captured the short­lived infatuation certain grime producers like Wiley and Jammer developed with eastern samples and melodies. Kode also dabbled with the idea on the beat for Fukkaz, the first (and I think only) digital dubplate the label released with Bleep in 2007, its string samples flying at you, like so many daggers in a kung fu movie. Despite never living on besides old pirate radio sets and the odd attempts at a revival, there was something about sino-grime’s detournement of an Asiatic sound palette that I always loved. As with the beats crossover of the late 2000s, if there was ever a label capable of capturing that idea and moving it forward it would be Hyperdub. Fatima Al­ Qadiri’s debut is preoccupied with China’s relationship with the west using Asiatic melodies, instruments and sounds over dubstep and grime influenced rhythms.

It’s testament to the label and its founder’s ability to reflect on what has been, what is and what might be that even after 10 years, they’re still capable of surprising – and pissing off – their longest standing fans. Sometime in the early 2010’s Kode9 admitted to (and I paraphrase here) feeling like at times the label had “grown a mind of its own”, and he was “merely trying to control it”. The idea that the virus he first nurtured all these years ago has finally gone sentient now makes beautiful sense.    

You can follow Laurent Fintoni on Twitter here: @laurent_fintoni