SBTRKT Is Back To Redefine UK Electronic Music (Again)
Thanks to artists like PinkPantheress, Shygirl and Mura Masa, garages, forests and houses are more popular than ever around the world. But SBTRKT was the British producer, songwriter and DJ who helped fuel the rise of electronic music in the UK in the early 2010s, both as a prolific remixer and, when he released his self-titled debut in 2011, as an artist. He has worked with artists like Sampha and Little Dragon, released popular Drake remixes, and rose to fame through these live shows. After releasing his latest LP, SAVE YOURSELF 2016, he plans to release music "more often," he now says. Unfortunately, it took seven years for the musician born Aaron Jerome to make a comeback. But his new album, The Rat Road , is the best thing he's ever done.
Jerome has spent the last five years amplifying the escape and catharsis of the dance floor of yesteryear. The Rat Path is sweet and warm, but also tense and haunting. And while his early post-dubstep music was widely covered on the music blogs that abounded at the time, he always kept a low profile, making him feel famous and unknown, the perfect avatar for today's doubters. time..
"The music industry itself has become something where you look at the peers around you, and there's no comparison or goal that you can share and say, 'What works for you, works for me,'" he says. Jerome. "I think there's a degree of unknown and everybody's struggling to figure out how it happened."
GQ spoke to SBTRKT about his new album, how one of his songs ended up in Drake and 21 Savage's "Jimmy Cooks" video, and whether he could become an anonymous artist in 2023.
As someone who really fell in love with music during the blogging era, you've always been an important artist to me.
I owe my career to the blogging age, that's for sure. Now, one of my great things is that we no longer have a culture of helping the poor. It's more about statistics. That period was very important to me, after the vinyl club era, but before the total social control of DSP. There's a magic point where people's personal opinions matter [laughs].
One of the things I've always noticed when working with colleagues is that people are interested in what's going on, whether it's something on Netflix that everyone should watch or a Kendrick album release. Everyone should have an opinion on that right away, whereas back then it was like walking into a record store and finding something you've never seen or heard of before. I'm the only one who keeps it, maybe because you pay for it you feel you have to spend more time to have it.
The financial investment seems so much less these days that you don't feel the need to spend time on a particular job.
Second, the DSPs [digital service providers like Spotify] control almost everything in general. What is detected, selected, or placed in the playlist is highly system dependent. That's where the music is. If you're doing a specific alternative dance song, you have to be within a certain genre space or tempo range, or have a certain feel to it to gain exposure. You change those rules and basically disappear on your own. Much harder to find or find in that regard.
Can you give an hour for the release of the album?
[As of 2016] I probably wrote about 1500 songs. Compared to the last time I made music, music is much more intense, experimenting and learning more than before. I wrote my first album over two years in the bedroom of my South London apartment. Over the years I had a great vision of the experiment, then found collaborators I wanted to bring into the mix, and worked with Sampha once a week for two years to create the space and momentum to build the finished album.
My second album was born from the first tour. I really felt a sense of spontaneity, just having a lot of keyboards and playing, nothing pre-planned.
And then we get into the SAVE YOURSELF period, which is almost reactionary to the previous two. I was in a state of independence thinking: "How and what do I mean as the next SBTRKT? What elements made SBTRKT enter SBTRKT?" Is it production? What is the sound? Is it my ability to switch between genders? And I felt like I really had to choose what I wanted to say in that mix, and I think I delivered them one at a time. So it was a process of sitting in my studio and saying, "I'm going to write all the songs until I feel comfortable enough to bring someone else in, and at that point I'm going to have a clearer idea of what the staff want." to do the mixing is to say, "Yeah, I'm open to whatever happens."
You're looking for music in bulk, but I'm wondering what makes a new artist go from "I understand what they do" to "I want to make music with them=" for you?
There are always times when something becomes a new language for me. So, for example, the first single [from The Rat Road ] was 'Waiting', which features Teezo Touchdown. I know because I saw it on the Call Me When You're Lost playlist with Tyler [The Creator] and heard it in a very special context for that album. But then he released a song called "I'm Just a Fan." I was impressed by her lyrical content, as well as her songwriting ability and her unique way of presenting her voice. So he's different from most people who work with London artists. I met him and he came to London, so we hung out and did stuff.
The essence of your initial identity is anonymity. Is it still important to you? Do you think it is possible to be anonymous now?
No, I don't think it's possible. Much of what I created then belongs to that time and space. My idea of anonymity is based in part on being an outsider in the music business. I wasn't born in London, I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. But other than that, I'm mixed race, South Asian, and very few people look like me on stage or in the industry. There is a level of resistance to them that is beyond who or what they should be. While my media story is based on saying, "Music makes you talk," I also feel like I'm saying, "Yeah, I'm hiding a lot of my personal identity in this." Maybe it will help me present my face in a more unique way. "This is the mask. This is something I'm not, and you're going to admit it now." At that time, I didn't see many artists who represented themselves like this. There are people like MIA and Jai Paul. They're the only ones in the field, another South Asian act, like some, pulling both on XL Records.
I think over time, one of the things that's gone through a lot of what's going on in the world is having your own cultural identity. It went viral through social networks, with the feeling that you should not hide that part of your personality. I feel that my past anonymity is combined with the fact that I don't have much of a voice in the media or in the press nor do I speak much about my music, musicality or emotionality being valued more than this lyrical side. singer. guide them too.
But it's not a chip on my shoulders. I feel like as a South Asian there is an element of erasing my stuff in the music. All the places where you can't stand a chance, and I think that also comes from people who know me. I have definitely noticed that other people besides you will get multiple options. We all know, of course, that this is not a system built on equality. [laughs] But I feel like it's time to say more about these things, whether it's to wrap up how these things work or what I want to represent in my identity to associate with my music.
I think an artist should be more open about their identity later in their career when their audience is interested and established.
Anyway, I'm pretty much an introvert. In general, I find interaction quite difficult, so the idea of being exposed or feeling like everyone is on social media and you have to be open goes against my personality. I don't feel like this is a level that I'm really comfortable with, but things aren't isolated.
I made this album at a turbulent time in world history, with the pandemic and the post-Brexit and cost of living crises. There is so much going on that this project is starting to feel very personal. [Now] it seems to have more to do with what's going on in general, through the collective anxiety everyone feels and the lack of independence about your future. It all ended up being part of the project and I was like, “Okay, look at my personality. Look at how the music industry has moved beyond before, and how do I feel in that space?'
What exactly does Rat Road mean?
Of course, there's the rat race part. It's like a British aesthetic. Based in London, where I compose and write music, I always felt there was an overall vibe in the city and beyond. I don't feel like all my music fits into that space geographically, but there is a sense of identity in my music, in a cultural or local sense. So the "path" part fits that. It's natural for some "rats" to feel that we really can't control our short-term future. There's so much going on on this planet [especially] because of the pandemic, everyone's asking, "How do you see something bigger than the next few months?"
How did "Forward" end up in the Drake & 21 Savage video and "Jimmy Cooks" album announcement?
I originally messaged Drake and his manager about the song because I said, "Maybe he'll do vocals on this one." It was probably about three weeks before this video was shot, but it was taken without my knowledge. I'm definitely surprised that it came up in that context, but it's completely out of control and I'm not talking about that.
And still not?
I wouldn't say it's new to me how the music industry works. It's great to see the song resonate, I was in a relationship with Drake 10 years ago when he did the Wildfire remix, but to see the new fans interact with the song and learn about the music in other ways, that [het] didn't know who he was. What I found interesting is that he appears in a diversion. It was a revelation for people to find it, not that it clearly registers to me as a production credit.
The method of transmitting this information is very similar to the SBTRKT of previous years.
I manage it myself, I check all my records. I do everything. If I have to book flights for other artists, I'll do it myself if I have to travel to meet people to set up sessions. Many of them are very direct relationships. This is a DM with Drake, it's a random encounter. I have to go out of my way to write that kind of stuff, so for me it's not about waiting for incoming calls and who tells me the cadence.
