SBTRKT announces first album in seven years, ‘The Rat Road’

SBTRKT has returned with details of his fourth album ‘The Rat Road’ alongside sharing its first single, ‘Waiting’ (feat. Teezo Touchdown).

The follow-up to Aaron Jerome’s 2016 album ‘SAVE YOURSELF’ arrives on May 5 and is available to pre-order/pre-save here.

‘Waiting’ hears the musician and producer experiment with a different sound from his earlier, bombastic electronic outings.

“I’m always listening to and looking out for new music – and came across a song of Teezo’s ‘I’m Just A Fan’ – in Oct ’21,” Jerome explained of collaborating with Touchdown for the album’s first single.

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“By serendipity [Touchdown] was heading to London the next week so we connected in person. In some ways – although personal to Teezo too – it perfectly vocalised everything I had been going through,” he said.

Speaking about his forthcoming LP, Jerome added: “This album has been my most sonically ambitious record to create – following my own musical path – which isn’t based on others’ perceptions of what SBTRKT should be.

“‘The Rat Road’ title is a play on the concept of ‘the rat race’. It’s partly based on my own challenging experiences within the music industry and life generally – though I realised the idea is not isolated from a much wider feeling of exhaustion – definitely true here in the UK with little sense of respite from ever increasing costs/decreasing opportunity/and a bold divide-and-conquer mentality.

“There is the juxtaposition in the record between determination and hopelessness.”

SBTRKT has released three albums to date: 2011’s ‘SBTRKT‘, 2014’s ‘Wonder Where We Land‘, and 2016’s ‘SAVE YOURSELF’.

The artist’s rose to popularity in the early 2010s with releases including ‘Wildfire‘ featuring Little Dragon. Elsewhere, he’s collaborated with Drake, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, A$AP Ferg, Sampha and The Dream.

Last year SBTRKT returned with a glitchy standalone single called ‘Bodmin Moor’.

He plays this year’s Field Day festival in London on August 19.