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Artist News
Jerry Dammers comments on death of Spaceape
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 6 October 2014
The Specials’ Jerry Dammers has paid tribute to MC Stephen Gordon, aka The Spaceape, who died last week. News of Gordon’s death was broken by the Hyperdub label, with which he was closely associated. The indie revealed that he had been suffering with a rare form of cancer for the last five years.
In a statement, Dammers, who had collaborated with Gordon in the past, said: “Stephen was not only a very pleasant and humble person, but remained incredibly brave and positive in the face of his terrible illness … The relative lack of recognition he received in the mainstream, reflects on it, not on him, or his talent, but there were plenty of people who did understand. It was a great honour that he recorded a version of The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ with Kode 9, by far and away the best version from the very very many I have been sent over the years”.
Gordon also performed a number of times with Dammers’ Special AKA Orchestra, including at 2008’s Love Music Hate Racism festival in London’s Victoria park. Of that show, Dammers said: “To me it was fitting that Stephen was the very last artist to voice at that show, carrying to some extent as he did, the Jamaican ‘dub poetry’ tradition, championed in the RAR era by Linton Kwesi Johnson, forward into the ‘dubstep’ era of recent years”.
Gordon was best known for his work with Hyperdub founder Kode9, the pair working on two albums together, 2006’s ‘Memories Of The Future’ and 2011’s ‘Black Sun’. He also recorded with Burial and The Bug.
