●●●●○
Before Chris Morris’ radio show Blue Jam was booted unceremoniously off the air for effectively alienating everybody in Britain, the deranged comedian used to link each scene together with ambient and laid back, but simultaneously nightmarish, collages of trip hop and electronic. It was a very 90s sound and has dated quite a bit, unfortunately. However, it is interesting to hear an artist such as Jerome Adams, better known as SBTRKT, taking that style, but updating it for a new generation, on this his second album, appropriately titled Wonder Where We Land.
It is hard to say whether you could actually move your feet to this album, as you could with his eponymous debut, because like Analogue Bubblebath-era Aphex Twin, or Squarepusher’s Hard Normal Daddy, it is more dance music in theory. In reality, he has written a hypnotic sprawl across a strange wilderness, with unsettling atmospherics reminiscent of the bizarre, but beautiful Ocean of Sound compilation.
Opening with a wall of shoegaze drones, the brief overture accelerates in volume, before coming to a sudden halt as the sparse reverb heavy vocals of Adams’ frequent collaborator, Sampha trickle gently onto the title track. Accompanied by a pulsating electronic hum and an irregular hammering of piano chords, the music descends deeper and deeper into jarring and murky territories that would be almost organic were it not for the occasional assault of video game bleeps to keep you on your feet. Yet, once the initial shock of unpredictability fades, the album becomes a serene landscape mixed together with glitch laden drum machines and synthesizers, which come across like a version of Crystal Castles, without the morbid overtones, but all of the intensity. This particularly dreamlike quality on tracks such as Higher and the spectacular Temporary View can make the listener completely at ease, while being frightening simultaneously.
It is a peculiar sensation, quite like waking up too early in a forest on a winter’s morning in a dew soaked tent, but it works. Whether Adams is deploying free form percussive tracks, heavily processed spoken word pieces by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, or tranquil versions of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, the intrigue of this new album is its true charm. The young producer is unfazed by experimenting and it is this confidence that seeps from every groove on the record, pushing the envelope quite a bit, but not returning to the world with something utterly impenetrable.
