MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Copyright holders: if you would like your song removed, please email us here, and we'll honor your request promptly.

The intense scrutiny of this week's MP3 Monday is on Kode9 -- London-based electronic musician and producer, Hyperdub label founder, university lecturer, early innovator of the dance genre dubstep, published academic, bass enthusiast, and violent sounds theorist.

Kode9 is in Shanghai in two capacities this week. Mainly, he's playing at The Shelter on Tuesday, along with the Sub-Culture kids, which should turn out to be a big night of "sick bass" and things like that. Kode9 played in Shanghai last year, and it was one of their most memorable nights, with the Shanghai bass freakazoids coming out in force to bow in humbled reverence before their master, getting all mashed up in his honor.

Here's some recent stuff by him to listen to.

This is a link to a promo mix Kode9 made for this Asian trip, and it features some new Hyperdub tracks and unreleased stuff, so if you want to get down with the latest output from one of the most influential electronic labels of the '00s, by all means, click here.

This next one is from Kode9's entry into the DJ-Kicks series, a string of DJ mixes for indie label, !K7 records. Since the series' inception in 1995, "the most important DJ-mix series ever" (says Mixmag) has seen people like Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Stereo MCs, Four Tet and many more put together stuff for it, and this is from Kode9’s DJ-Kicks, released in July of this year.


Click here to have a look at the whole luminescent series.

In addition to his Tuesday show at The Shelter, Kode9 is also appearing as Steve Goodman at Dada bar on Monday night, giving a talk on his first published book, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, out there now on MIT Press. The book is a product of Goodman's other personal interaction with music, as a critical theorist, and in the book he's examining the affects of sound and acoustic force on groups and populations. It delves into military research on the capacity of sound to be used as a weapon -- evil intentions, nefarious strategies, disturbing sounds -- to draw a relationship between sound and body, using that as a platform to look at soundsystem culture in Jamaica and the UK, bass culture, and music in general.

Think there is a happy ending. Think it's somewhat affirming in the end when you get past all the evil CIA sonic warfare stuff.

If you want a better primer into Goodman's academic work and this book, check out this interview in The Wire. A very interesting read.

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Steve Goodman and 'Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear' is tonight at Dada bar. There is no cover for that. Free edification -- the best kind. Event details here.

And don't forget the main event: Kode9 at The Shelter Tuesday night. Event details here.

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