Kode9 announces sci-fi sonic fiction project, ‘Astro-Darien’

Music

Kode9 has announced details of Astro-Darien, a 26-minute sonic fiction about the break-up of Britain, set for release on Hyperdub offshoot Flatlines.

It marks the second part in a two-part series, the first being his instrumental Escapology LP released in July of this year.

The documentary fiction is framed as an eponymous video game that simulates a Scottish space station and a launch during a period when everything is going wrong.

A press release details the loose plot of the game: “[Astro-Darien] follows a game designer from a fictional games company called ‘Trancestar North’ who, in attempting to lift the dark spell cast by Darien, models a counter-future by ingesting cosmism, the history of racial capitalism and the demise of Empire into T-Divine, the geopolitics simulator of the game engine. She follows the Brexit algorithm as it runs to its logical conclusion.”

Initially conceived as an audio essay for diffusion on François Bayle’s 50 speaker Acousmonium for INA-GRM in Paris in March 2020, after being postponed due to the pandemic, the project surfaced as a 3-screen a/v installation on the dance floor of Corsica Studios in June 2021. A live A/V set relating to the Astro-Darien game universe will debut at Unsound Festival in October 2022.

The release marks the second outing on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines, with the first, Mark Fisher and Justin Barton’s ‘On Vanishing Land’, featuring an audio essay centred around a walk along the South East Coast of England.

Astro-Darien will be released on 11th November via Flatlines.