Jerome's forceful drumming capabilities have irrefutably become something of a tour de force and as the skins are rattled and clacked you suspect the mirrors reflecting all manner of misdemeanour in the neighbouring Moulin Rouge are quivering. La Machine meanwhile, with its strategically positioned balconies and poles, its urinals overflowing makes Madame Jojo's look like one of London's innumerable and inconceivably pure Jo Malone outlets. They're on early – possibly facilitating further pillaging of the depths of the disgraceful for some – and to set the stage quite definitively, SBTRKT's time to shine is now as the underground stalwart splurges through the pavements of Paris, twatting jazz kit to maximum, mesmeric effect. They emerge to a blanket of thick whooping, Sampha mumbles the intrinsically glamorous and moreover vaguely immortal phrase of "Hello Paris", and so it begins.
Following the rigid structure of the widely acclaimed eponymous debut long-player the undulating frequencies of a particularly humid Heatwave are followed up by an increasingly potent Hold On, Sampha's superlative vox hauled to the fore for the first time as they begin to acculturate to the profoundly deep and deeply meaningful, as if snatched from some lost soul record. A roisterous bongo breakdown of sorts and extended kalimba samples ensure the track accrues a mild sense of theatrical majesty, prior to descending into a monstrously blippy, slaughterous Chicago house whopper with bloody cowbells on it. What with it being vendredi soir it seems apposite that our wildest desires to get deep down and dirty be fulfilled by the gritty garage propensities of Living Like I Do, its hefty bass aggravated to an irate drone that instills a sense of shuffle in every static leg and ecstatic mind. With the tension allowed to build to the stature of sky-scraping multistory, the celestial and again soulful Something Goes Right dissipates any rigidity thus allowing all to swim into a both fluid and lucid "dream world". Something of an unorthodox clap-along ensues, clattering into the gently menacing Trials of the Past that sounds suitably énorme, Jerome's drums as fidgety and thunderous as lightning crackling down the Tour Eiffel.
However as with any act to tamper with and splash about in a Gorillaz-ish deoxyribonucleic acid, the set comes across as somewhat deformed when devoid of vocal cameo as on an otherwise startling Pharaohs, and here it begins to assimilate the deflating air of a DJ set. Arms are, however, hoisted aloft irregardless. Conversely however when they return to the bottomed-out womp of Step in Shadows, its hip hop drum machine rhythms – a nod to a "ghost of Christmas past" as it were – dotted with asiatic twangs à la Gold Panda, once-irradiate attentions fizzle somewhat for although Jerome demonstrates great inclination towards the aspirational he here remains true to he and indeed we as loyal consumers. Nonetheless every intention and expectation has been irrevocably altered almost beyond recognition to which a Sampha-led (and exasperatingly Nagano-less) Wildfire attests, purveying quite unerringly where they're at concurrently but perhaps more pertinently where Paris is at tonight. Plumped up with teasing drops, tumultuous '80s synths, and Drake's vexatious, vacuous garble it's evinced as the apex of crossover pop and one that's as grubby as it is great.
Both Jerome and Sampha periodically affirm: "We are SBTRKT" throughout, and this sense of holy musical matrimony is never more finely attuned than on Never Never on which lovelorn idiophone plinks are wondrously offset by Sisay's spiritedly promulgated plight of never having had so much to gain only to "throw it all away". They make for a puckish team, and the game they play is indubitably wicked: Right Thing To Do, on the continent, sounds as garishly Europoppy as never previously, pertaining to the brash naffness of Alexandra Stan's Mr. Saxobeat at points before flourishing in the most dubby moments of the night, Jerome coaxing a wibble and a great wobble out from a largely neglected theremin stage-right. Perceptibly roused by our every rabid reaction the pair exultantly splutter: "Merci beaucoup" as they depart, although the pleasure has been and quite conceivably always will be ours.
