SBTRKT: The Rat Road review – audacious electronic gems

Masked electronic producer SBTRKT came up in the 2010s, pioneering the enthusiastic cross-pollinations and collaborations that power pop today. Sampha and Jessie Ware were just two voices that benefited from this versatile London composer’s leg-up. New Dorp, New York (2014), with Ezra Koenig, still sounds cutting-edge now.

Six years on from 2016’s Save Yourself, SBTRKT is now openly using his real name, Aaron Jerome, bidding to be better understood as a creative force, rather than a springboard or remixer. His first official track back, the banging Bodmin Moor, channelled retro glitch and echoing dread with renewed aplomb. Scattered throughout this aurally erudite 22-track record are audacious exercises at reaping beauty from a restless digital palette: the spacious, wiggly drum’n’bass of You, Love outclasses much of the jungle 2.0 around now, while You Broke My Heart but Imma Fix It is so nimble and textured it’s impossible to pin down.

The slight downside: The Rat Road remains dominated by voices that are not Jerome’s, so it’s hard to hear the autobiography. But that’s a small caveat. Sampha’s here, naturally, on tracks such as the 90s-nodding LFO, while this auteur showcases terrific vocalists in Leilah and George Riley with generosity and an ear for the mainstream.