REVIEW: SBTRKT – THE RAT ROAD

It has felt like forever since we last had a full length LP from SBTRKT, the producer hasn’t released an ‘album’ since 2014’s Wonder Where We Land so it’s not easy to anticipate exactly what The Rat Road is going to sound like going in.

Instantly you are hit with a fresh and expansive sound. WAITING has such a huge scale to its production and the way the vocals sit over the top of everything. The compactness and almost simplicity of his previous work expanded to bring more of an ‘international’ sound to everything for want of a better word. To me this album starts pulling from more of a mainstream RnB space on tracks like this, perhaps more an indicator of the impact of the music he was making a decade ago than SBTRKT taking more influences.

I’m a big fan of the variety on offer here, the splashes of Jazz piano on GO TO GROUND melding into the processed vocals of WASTED. The tempo for the first half is pretty low, this mostly isn’t an album to make you dance, it’s definitely more of a chillout and self affirming record instead. Dreamy vocals and intermittent spoken interludes break things up. Sampha truly shines on SBTRKT records and L.F.O and LIMITLESS end up being some of the strongest records from the collaboration we’ve heard yet.

It’s the second half on the likes of Drum & Bass interlude YOU, LOVE and NO INTENTION that we are dancing and it’s a welcome development through the record once the pace kicks in. It’s here where SBTRKT feels most at home and the album really gets into a groove. The tracks that lead into DEMONS really recapture the magic of the self titled debut from back in 2011.

It’s disappointing to see the last few tracks hit less hard than I’d want them to. The title track and Little Dragon collab I SEE A STAIR fail to really drive the album home at the last moment, for me not leaving the listener on the high I was hoping for.

As a long time fan, having just the third full length SBTRKT album in over a decade is more than welcome and The Rat Road is almost worth the wait. It outstays its welcome just slightly and could have done with a big peak moment or two to define itself as one of the most exciting albums of the year so far. As it stands it’s still one of the more enjoyable ones.

Words by Sam Atkins