If first-wave UK dubstep had a voice, it belonged to Stephen Gordon. From his teaming with Kode9 on the first-ever Hyperdub release to pivotal appearances on tracks by Burial, the Bug, and Martyn, the poet and vocalist known as Spaceape lent his ten-ton doomsayer croak to dozens of definitive works of music and was positioned as the Linton Kwesi Johnson of the post-7/7, surveillance-state UK. His death of cancer earlier this month was a saddening shock, the second time this year after DJ Rashad's tragic passing that a Kode9-championed artist passed away within a week of a promising new EP.
The main difference is that Spaceape knew he could be taken from us at any moment. The condition he had spent years living with informed his earlier work in ways that are only now becoming clear. Following the allusions in Kode9 teamup Black Sun ("Black Smoke") and his 2012 self-released solo EP Xorcism ("He Gave His Body Over to Science"), the five-song EP Killing Season further addresses Spaceape's physical condition and his ways of not only coping with it but extrapolating his own state of health to the sense of unease and trepidation that everybody stares down sooner or later.
Spaceape's voice is typically known for its deep resonance and chest-out intensity, and his presence on these tracks brings a few different shades of that tension to the fore. There's a nuanced shift from the grinding, exertion-wracked snarl of "Chasing a Beast" to the seething contemplation of "Devil Is a Liar", frustration and foreboding shot through with a need to connect with the listener. But his fervor borders on pleading with "Heart", the song that gives the EP its title and connects the tactile fragility of the human body to the forces that break it; here, his anger is shot through with empathetic sorrow that carries through the remainder of the EP.
Kode9's production has rarely sounded more in tune with his longtime collaborator than it does over these brief cuts, his spacious yet bass-heavy minimalism laid out to powerful effect as it keeps Spaceape's sharply articulated delivery in mind. While the instrumental-vocal pairings in their music has often been rendered interchangeable by design—their live sets frequently switched up beats and acapellas for effect—there are allusions and juxtapositions on Killing Season that make the mindstate of the words and the music inseparable.
The handful of cuts on this record play to both artists' strengths here, particularly the sprinting-through-quicksand blues lope of "Chasing a Beast" and the decaying, EKG-beep-inflected bass drone of "Autumn Has Come". But it's the briefest, sparsest one that cuts right to the core: There's a brittle, bell-like analog synth that chimes through the course of "Pictures on the Wall," acting as the song's only instrumental element. Whether it's sourced from the electric piano/guitar intro to Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" or simply evokes it by loose resemblance, Spaceape's bitter commentary on the "tired old perceptions of human introspection"—taunting him from a hospital room he can't leave—feels like a clear-eyed but emotional counterpoint to the escapist boho romanticism of dying behind the wheel. Stephen Gordon didn't get the death he or anybody who heard his voice would have chosen. But his perspective on it—and the way it closes the book on a memorable, influential career—is what needed to be heard.
