'Next stop is Queens Road '- aya's Hexed! is Quietus & Wire album of the year

First day back at work yesterday after the Christmas break, and a nice moment of synchronicity. As is my wont at this season I have been working my way through various lists of the best albums of the last year. Number one on the Quietus list for 2025 is aya's Hexed! on Hyperdub, with Claire Dibbles describing the artist 'as a master of sound design, functioning as both a storytelling tool and as a descriptor of emotion'. The album is also no.1 on the Wire magazine's end of year list.

Listening to the track 'off to the ESSO' my ears pricked up at the line 'next stop is Queens Road' as I was just approaching Queens Road Peckham station. OK other Queens Roads are available, but as aya apparently has a studio in Peckham I'm going to take this an SE15 reference

As for the album, it certainly woke me up on a wintry Monday morning. Check out this interesting interview with aya at Fader which describes her 'uncanny, abrasive collages' and the album's 'bewildering journey through pummelling electronic noise'.

aya on the cover of The Wire, May 2025

Ikonika also has a new album out - SAD - on Hyperdub by the way, which puts me in mind of one of my favourite Transpontine posts, from 2013 - the story of Ikonika, Katy B and Ayre's Nunhead bakers.

Music Monday: The Spaceape RIP

Stephen Gordon, who recorded as the Spaceape, died earlier this month after living with cancer for several years.

This is from Melissa Bradshaw's obituary of him in the Guardian (24 October 2014):

'The Spaceape, who has died of cancer aged 44, was a poet, vocalist and MC from London who took the Jamaican dub poetry tradition into a new and experimental age. Born Stephen Gordon, he made a series of recordings as The Spaceape – both in his own right and with others including the pioneering DJ, producer and academic Kode9 and the Mercury Prize-nominated electronic artist Burial – that defined “dubstep”, the bass-heavy soundtrack to much of 21st-century youth culture...

His longest-term collaboration was with Kode9 (Steve Goodman), the founder of the Hyperdub record label that became synonymous with the rise of dubstep in the early 2000s. Gordon had never performed or recorded music until Goodman, his flatmate, suggested that they should try doing a track together. Gordon chose a cover version of the Prince song Sign O’The Times, and the result, Sine of the Dub, became the first single to be released on Hyperdub in 2006...

Gordon was born in Peckham, south London, to Joyce, a healthcare worker, who died when he was 12, and Hubert, who worked for Ford. He attended the William Penn secondary school [now Charter School] in Dulwich. After leaving school aged 17, he worked in clothes retail, and did an access course at the London College of Fashion, followed by a degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. His father returned to Jamaica when Gordon was 21, but he stayed in London, working at the British Film Institute, and then as an image researcher at the BBC, leaving shortly after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.

He is survived by his wife, Luciana, their daughter, Cleo, and his father. Stephen Samuel Gordon (The Spaceape), poet and MC, born 17 June 1970; died 2 October 2014'

His final EP with Kode9 The Killing Season, has just been released.

Hyperdub's 5th birthday at Corsica Studios, Elephant & Castle, 2009

- I saw Kode9and The Spaceape there