SBTRKT is not so much a band as a roving musical project led from behind the scenes by Aaron Jerome; a frontpersonless act that gleans singers and collaborators from multiple genres. It doesn’t augur well, then, for a live show. Jerome struts in under the caked plaster of the Brixton Academy, flanked by a drummer and a keyboardist-percussionist. Across the huge, high-definition visual panels behind them are the vanishing trunks of a wood at night, stretching off into shadow.
Who’s going to be the showman tonight? A switch is thrown and the pre-recorded a cappella vocals of Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano screech across the crowd and stutter into silence. The crowd roars – these are the lyrics to Wildfire, the crossover dance hit that launched SBTRKT into stardom. But then there’s a pause, a blast from a huge lighting rig, and the band play something else – an abstract, weighty instrumental startlingly different from the accessible Wildfire. It is a tease.
Wonder Where We Land, the new album being promoted on this tour, takes a conscious step away from Wildfire, which misrepresented Jerome’s vision for SBTRKT (pronounced “subtract”) as a sort of crossover dubstep. The new set has hits, but it also dips to near-beatlessness and drowns its vocalists in layers of synthesiser. This live show needs to bridge pop sensationalism and a more contemplative, deeper kind of electronic music.
Sampha, the shining young singer linked to the SBTRKT project, would be the obvious solution to the problem of a missing frontperson – but you sense these guys are not into that sort of fix. Instead, he clambers on and off stage all night. He is a compelling, charming performer, a highlight of the evening. Later, he’ll say a thank you to SBTRKT and almost choke with emotion – Jerome has lifted him to the level of Britain’s best pop singers.
Young Atlantan rapper Raury appears for Higher, a track from the new album. The music is slowed to a syrupy pace to accommodate his dense double-time lyrics – not all of which he manages to fit in, and the song ends up sleepier than it should. Then, after the ecstatic dance of Pharaohs, Wildfire returns – the lyrics, in giant red letters, scroll across the display before the song lands.
But it’s telling that the show only takes off once Wildfire is out of the way. The band race into the leering electro-soul of The Light, with a wicked vocal turn from the perfectly poised Denai Moore, and then into the new album’s first single, New Dorp. New York. These fit fabulously after all the stops and starts, the demanding instrumental phases and teasing broken promises – two pieces of deeply weird pop music cramming offbeat songwriting ideas into manageable forms.
Jerome’s knack for sourcing singers is undoubtedly part of the winning formula. When he picks up the mic himself to cover for the absent Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend, a chain of effects send his vocals plummeting to a slur. No one bats an eyelid.
The band step down from the stage in darkness and a giant inflatable panther is revealed, introducing an old SBTRKT remix of Radiohead, which is transformed into a showpiece. Finally, Jerome gets the chance to front his project, climbing out from his nest of synths to sing Right Thing to Do. Odd, manic, fun, it’s a fitting curtain call for what has been an amorphous and risky kind of show, sneakily successful against the odds.
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