SBTRKT – ‘The Rat Road’
Aaron Jerome, better known as SBTRKT, has returned with his fourth album, The Rat Road. It might be his first since 2016’s Save Yourself, but this long wait has not ended in disappointment. The Rat Road is 22 tracks of creative nouse, encompassing genres ranging from dubstep to ambient in what is a great example of how to create dance music for contemporary times, plucking inspiration from everywhere and anywhere. Of course, this has always been SBTRKT’s style, but on his new offering, Jerome refines the formula and is helped by a cast of familiar faces, including Toro y Moi, Sampha, D Double E and Teezo Touchdown.
Whilst you might argue that the album has too many songs, with it taking a few intense listening sessions to differentiate between each inclusion, The Rat Road is still a compelling body of work that touches on varying emotions. In a testament to Jerome’s skill, this layered complexity was intentional. He explicitly sought to create a sonic adventure that’s hard to quantify and jumps between moods in the blink of an eye. He also handles the dictated essence of the digital age with the lack of audience engagement astutely mirrored in the way in which this album only concentrates on a mode for a short time. In this sense, The Rat Road is unquestionably postmodern and unbelievably vivid.
“As humans, our moods are changeable,” Jerome says. “We are still able to laugh amidst this collective anxiety. I’m tapping into how we feel about our role in climate change and the future, the politics of Britain, but also the music industry. You need all your wits about you to not get screwed over.”
Jerome achieves his goals on the new album. Augmenting proceedings is that there’s a distinctly sunny essence coursing throughout the entirety, with props going to the production for facilitating such a multifaceted body of work.
Whilst The Rat Road will undoubtedly be spun by fans for a long time, something about it specifically appeals to sunnier times that happen to be on the horizon. Whether it be the jazzy basslines, bombastic synth-driven palettes, or nostalgic-sounding garage beats, I’d recommend this one to soundtrack a squiffy day in the park before it segues into a night in which more delights are to be discovered.
The record fuses with my own experiences of summer in London. It evokes the optimism of the period when the capital’s greenery is in full bloom, and everyone – despite the city’s reputation – seems relatively content, regardless of the copious amounts of sweat on display. In many ways, that is the great triumph of The Rat Road. In wanting to create a genuinely human-sounding record, Jerome has realised his full vision as SBTRKT and created a record that appeals to everyone – you just have to be willing to give yourself up to it. It meshes with the listener’s lived experience and place in the world. Not many artists can claim to have achieved such a feat.
The Rat Road starts as it means to go on. The string-driven dreamscape of ‘Remnant’ opens his account, and it is so captivating that you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a Harold Budd harmony. It then melts into the psychedelic jazz of ‘Waiting’, featuring Teezo Touchdown, a mellow piece with a languid beat and some colourful vocal treatments. This track also comes with one of the album’s most infectious vocal earworms and some 1970s-sounding keyboards that bring the funk.
The single ‘Days Go By’ lodges a strong claim as one of the finest cuts on the album. Featuring Toro y Moi, it bridges Jerome’s work and the former’s mesmeric style, creating an escapist moment with the pulsating synth that carries it lifted by y Moi’s otherworldly vocals. Then, the nostalgia of the 2009-esque, Stylophone-sounding synth line emerges just after the two-minute mark. It cements the track’s greatness within seconds.
The Sampha and George Riley-featuring ‘LFO’ is another standout. Kicking off with glitchy electronic consistencies, it metamorphoses into an ambient-inflected piece of wonky-pop perfect for the dancefloor. In a testament to the randomness of human nature that Jerome sought to imitate, out of nowhere, a suave bassline appears in the latter part of the song, creating a completely different mood and heightening the euphoria.
‘No Intention’ is another highlight, and it would be an offence not to include it on the reel. The track opens with an atmospheric, lovelorn arpeggio before Leilah’s warm vocals add extra flavour and wrap themselves around you. Piercing by straddling the line between introspective and anthemic, this one will pop in the live setting.
Elsewhere, the slacker synth and beat of ‘Limitless’ is exquisite, with the melody evoking memories of the good times of the mid-2010s. On the other end of the spectrum is the narcotic garage of ‘You, Love’, which features one of Jerome’s slickest beats on The Rat Road – the subtle sub and strings complement it well. The slow build of the closer ‘I See A Stair’ is also a worthy talking point, with the traditional and contemporary instrumentation dovetailing to create intrigue before the profundity of the vocal melody takes us by the hand and off into SBTRKT’s future.
I hope it’s not another seven years before SBTRKT releases an album. The Rat Road is fantastic. Make sure you play this one loud; there’s too much going on to be played quietly.
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