In 2018, fabric concluded its iconic FABRICLIVE mix series with its 100th edition, helmed by Kode9 and Burial. Bringing together two of the UK’s most prominent and uncompromising dance music avant gardists was a stunning hattrick of a finale, one that fabric looks to reconjure with their latest fabric Originals release. Infirmary / Unknown Summer brings the Hyperdub boss and the label’s elusive superstar together outside of the Hyperdub bubble. But the two-track joint EP doesn’t really propose too deep of a conversation, occupied instead with languid soundscapes that speak to one another in snatches of commonality.
Kode9 and Burial stick to their respective styles. For the former, that’s kinetic and textured flourishes of 2-step, while for the latter that would be spectral, quasi-ambient washes of sound. Kode9’s Infirmary chops segments of big band jazz and interlaces it with rubbery footwork. With its repeated horn motifs, echoes in the buoyant bass, the track feels familiar in the way of Jana Rush or the late, great DJ Rashad. While Infirmary, on all accounts, goes off, it does so with a subtlety that feels sophisticated and in service of the rhythmic complexities Kode9 explores here. Burial’s Unknown Summer continues the producer’s recent foray into cinematic ambient soundscapes, but rejoice – there is a beat. Sort of. Burial’s drums are played from a preternatural distance, like the sounds of a dancefloor from another dimension emanating beyond the veil into our own. Most of the space is occupied by the everyday sounds of buzzing cicadas and other pastoral sound cues signal that we’re outside on a hot summer’s night, dissonant chords warping through time and space at the belly of the track to contort it toward the surreal and uncanny.
Infirmary / Unknown Summer is not the immediate smash that fabric may have hoped for, taking shape instead as a quiet exploration by Kode9 and Burial into the aesthetics of summer, from sweltering heat to languid humidity. Neither singles are anything groundbreaking for their creators, but make for an enjoyable exploration into two opposite sides of the same idea.
