After five years away from solo production, Steve Goodman—better known as Kode9—returns with The Jackpot, a two-track EP on his own Hyperdub imprint and his first proper solo release since 2015’s Nothing. It arrives as the lead single from Escapology, a long-gestating album due later this year, and finds the label boss in typically restless mood: both tracks operate on dubstep’s low-end grammar whilst leaning hard into the experimental, off-kilter territory he helped define.
Title track The Jackpot is a frantic, off-key zigzagger. Its rhythm stumbles and stutters, refusing to settle into anything resembling a steady groove, whilst detuned synth stabs lurch wildly across the top of the mix, flirting with dissonance at every turn. The bass, when it arrives, is classic Kode9—weighty and physical, anchoring the chaos just enough to keep it danceable. It’s the sound of a producer delighting in instability, and the four and a half minutes fly past in a blur of wrong notes that somehow resolve into something irresistible.
Rona City Blues is the EP’s other side, and its most immediately gripping moment. Juke-style drums skitter and double-time beneath lush, warm pads, giving the track a melancholy, almost cinematic quality that contrasts sharply with its predecessor. Where The Jackpot jitters, Rona City Blues glides—the pads sighing over a drum pattern that twists and pivots with real rhythmic invention, and the whole thing carried on a deep, rolling sub that rewards a serious system.
Across its two tracks, The Jackpot feels less like a stopgap than a statement of intent—a reminder that one of the genre’s founding figures is still at his most exciting when he’s least comfortable. It’s brief, and it leaves you wanting more, which is exactly what a lead single should do. If Escapology holds up a fraction of the invention on show here, the wait will have been worth it.
