Who Is SBTRKT?

Mystery is the new marketing, and British producer Aaron Jerome has found the perfect balance between buzzworthy tunes and savvy presentation with his enigmatic persona SBTRKT.

His signature blend of dubstep, hip-hop, soul, and electronic music has caught the attention of contemporaries like Drake and Little Dragon, who were both featured on the "Wildfire" remix, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anything but praise for the London native's self-titled debut.

Although he keeps his face concealed behind those Hidden Place masks, he was completely open with us about his sound, influences, and why he's decided to remain anonymous in the first place. Continue to find out Who Is SBTRKT from the man himself.

As told to Ernest Baker (@newbornrodeo).

SBTRKT: "I use Logic for most of my recording. I did [my album] in my living room. Even all the vocals were recorded there. Just a basic Mackie mixer, a Rhode mic, and a few analog bits of synthesizers, but nothing too heavy. I don’t have a lot of kits to be honest.

"I tend to write ideas and then sit on them for quite a while. I put them on my iPod and if I can’t listen to it for 20 seconds later on then I realize it’s a crap idea and we start from something else. I’m not someone who rolls stuff out and then that’s the finished product. I'm always going back to re-work the tracks. Especially for the album stuff.

"I generally put down bass and melodics first, and then try to put them in some sort of context. I have folders and folders of weird track names which I use when I’m looking for some inspiration and I’ll realize I’ve done something a year ago which has some sort of weird, cool direction I can use now."

Modeselektor "Art & Cash (SBTRKT Remix)"

SBTRKT: "It's purely experimentation because it's doing collaborations in a weird way. You're given someone else’s vocals or parts and you're amped to recontextualize them in a new direction.

"It's quite exciting to do remixes. It's profile-building in the sense that working on material and putting out records establishes my sound and identity without necessarily having to put out my own records week in and week out.

"The album is something I’ve always wanted to finish up. It’s been work for a year, a year and a half. All the time I spent writing stuff and working on the records, I wanted to get to that stage where I put out bodies of work so people can understand me as an artist and I can continue from that point. Remixes aren’t quite as important in the mix as they were before."

SBTRKT: "We’ve all played with each other, and collaborated in different ways with people like Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Ramadanman, and others. This disjointed, futuristic, dance electronic genre is there and there’s a lot of interaction that comes from people hanging around what was the tail end of grime and dubstep in the UK and kind of taking that into different strands.

"I think everyone has a totally different type and different sounds. There's a fresh approach of taking pieces of everything and making up new genres of music, which hasn’t been done for a while. It sounds like there’s some sort of unique, new sound being made, but I think it's just taking something from several different genres."

SBTRKT: "He’s had his ear to what’s been going on in UK and London for a while now. He collaborated with Jamie xx from The xx, and I think through that network he must have heard extra stuff of mine because we released stuff on the same label. From that linkage he heard my album and was really into it. I heard back that he went nuts for the record and then he did his own version 'Wildfire' and put it up on his blog. That was the first link. I had never spoken to him before that. But it developed further, and he came to the Toronto show and performed with us, which was amazing.

"I’m not so much star-struck or anything. It's more about seeing people from very different worlds who are feeling something which is quite far away from where they’re at. He doesn’t kind of need to be checking in on what’s going on in the South London scene and the UK. It’s amazing seeing someone who’s bigger looking for new music.

"I saw him talking about his tour on Twitter, so I asked, 'We supporting?' He wrote back, 'The world needs that,' and it's still being retweeted now. Then he messaged me and said, 'Let's try to sort this out.' I said, 'We’re playing in Toronto. If you fancy jumping onstage and playing that track live, let's do it,' and he was very up for it. He’s opened us up to a new audience, in the U.S. especially. The amount of people talking about 'Wildfire' is kind of crazy."

SBTRKT: "I’ve been listening to their albums for a while and I've been a big fan. They seem to have a real, original direction. Every time they put out new material, it's always forward-thinking and changing up and doing something which no one thinks they’ll do. They're not conforming to what other people think is pop music or electronic or any particular genre. Even in terms of live shows, they’re pretty exciting. I was really keen on working with Yukimi, and they were really up for it.

"It was more of an email thing with them because before 'Wildfire,' I did a remix on their label so I had a connection there. I’ve seen them at a couple of shows and met them once before. That was the only track on the album that wasn’t done face-to-face. We just went back and forth over email because they’re in Sweden. All the other vocalists from the album were direct."

SBTRKT f/ Jessie Ware "Right Thing To Do"

SBTRKT: "I've always been naturally drawn to working with vocalists because writing songs and arranging full tracks is much more exciting and challenging than doing instrumental songs. You can write instrumental tracks in three minutesl, knock them out, put them on the 'net, and have DJs play them. But for me, the challenge is finishing off and writing fully-rounded songs, lyrically and melodically. The only way I can do that is by collaborating with other people.

"The vocalists on the record are all people in London that I've got a close connection to. Sampha [from 'Hold On'], I found through a guy at the label who already knew him from some of his producing work. He was producing tracks of his own and I was listening to some of his stuff at my house and then he played me one of the tracks he had done vocal ideas on and I was blown away by his tone and ideas, and the way he sings. It was unique, the way he was projecting his voice and his vocal style so I was keen on doing something with him.

"From there we just went on to doing a lot of collaborations, working in my living room all over a year and a half, writing more songs, having him come along and flourish vocal ideas. There were times that we just started from scratch playing around on synthesizers, having jam sessions, and making up things on the fly. We'd spend half an hour playing something and then listen to the whole lot and realize in the middle there was something that we could start with. I’d pick out something and work with that as the idea for a new song.

"Jessie Ware [from 'Right Thing To Do'] was another connection through the label people because she was working with another band they had and I was doing some other work looking for a female singer and I felt she could fit in my project because she has a very versatile style and voice, so it was very easy to work with her.

"Roses Gabor [from 'Pharaohs'] is someone I found through just listening to this DJ called Mistajam on Radio 1. I heard some grimy tracks they were playing by this group J2K and I was really intrigued by her voice. After that, I found out that she was part of Gorillaz with Damon Albarn, but she was also touring with Yukimi at the time from Little Dragon because Gorillaz has a weird linkage to everyone."

SBTRKT: "I love Timbaland's stuff. N.E.R.D was a really big influence. They were artists that were able to establish their own sound and also produce for other people. The ambitiousness of their songs really inspired me. It's something soulful, but it trips up and does something original and unique every time.

"Growing up, I was into everything from Michael Jackson to New Jack Swing and Bobby Brown to Public Enemy. Then I really got into electronic music. House music like Masters At Work was a really big influence on me early on. Stuff like 'The Nervous Track' by Nuyorican Soul. Then I got into the new UK genres like drum-n-bass, trip-hop, and UK garage. I’ve always been inspired by a lot of music."

SBTRKT: "The masks were decided upon to create an artistic identity that isn’t my face or my back-story. It's like creating a new identity and biography for SBTRKT. The music you create or your artist persona isn't necessarily who you’re born as, especially with electronic music. Most artists are writing something in a make-believe world, created with a new vision which has nothing to do with their real name or who they’ve grown up with.

"I don’t like the idea of having to describe or sell my music by telling people who I was or trying to tell why it's relevant, because I don’t feel that anything is relevant beyond the point of when you're making the song. You're trying to create something totally different and describing that physical process of it doesn’t matter. People should be more imaginative about the artistic side of it than trying to fill in gaps about my age, and where I grew up or where I live.

"Sometimes fans and journalists ask, 'Can you tell us what you really look like?' I tell them that’s not really the point. It's like it's about color or race, and that seems to be a large issue in music, whether someone’s black or white or Asian. I saw someone on a YouTube video going, 'Is SBTRKT black or white?' and someone said, 'No, they’re blue and yellow.' I thought that was funny.

"The whole idea behind the design of the masks was to represent the spirit of tribal masks, and the idea that people behind the mask would become the persona of something else when they put it on. Wearing a mask means you have to outperform how people perceive you to be."