Kode9

Kode9 drops his first single in two years. ‘Xingfu Lu’ is a kind of musical puzzle. Named after a Shanghai street where it was started, it's intense, wrapping angular chords that are simultaneously ecstatic and brutal around a structure that contracts and dilates, switching from double time hats and kicks to half time hip hop speed. It sounds strangely faster than it's 150 bpm as well, building ugly chord structures into strange shapes. ‘Kan's strange, almost 3D structure combines clinking glass and pouring drink with a rhythm track alternating between skittering triplets and bouncy dancehall-style drums, half speed bass drops and spirals of glassy high-hats, every eight bars punctuated with Trap-style tuned snares. Relentless chords stab at the centre, holding it's unstable structure in place.

• 1 Xingfu Lu
• 2 Kan