[Hyperdub]

Probably the second-most-discussed thing about Hyperdub is Kode9’s versatility. If you evaluated this solely on the basis of his releases for the aforementioned label, it wouldn’t seem abundantly clear. That is, until December’s LD-team-up, “Bad/2 Bad,” a housed-up, UK garage workout that didn’t sound one thing like the slow-burning future dub of his Space Ape collaborations. But then, almost nothing from Hyperdub’s 2008 reprised the label’s lauded past.

In a “Hyperdub Showcase” on Benji B’s BBC radio show last month, the man behind it all, Mr. Steve Goodman, cited Flying Lotus as one catalyst for the latest turns of the Hyperdub screw. Goodman tips his hat to Lotus for sparking a taste for “smeared pitch-bent synth lines” like the ones that course through Samiyam’s “Return” and, notably, the latest Kode9 release. Well on the “hyper” end of the label’s output, “Black Sun” is as bright and in your face as 2006’s “Sine of the Dub” was hunkered down and muttering in an alley. Weird, crunching body music, this is much bigger than “Bad/2 Bad.” Neat hi-hats and forceful compound-fracture beats handle the irrepressible rhythm while burbling keyboards dance over an inebriated, pitch-shifted drone that secures a broken weirdness for the track. “2 Far Gone” almost versions “Black Sun,” this time overlaying the paranoia and dread typically associated with the Kode9 brand on a similar pairing of punchy beats and smeared pads. A chanted vocal clip, “It’s too far gone / It’s too much yet…,” sounds at once like one of Space Ape’s seething reprimands and the ecstatic warning cries of Adonis’ “No Way Back.” Beyond the voice and lyric likenesses, those reference points prove useful in describing the record in general — dark and haunting, but also infectious and energizing.