Forest of Your Problems

Snapped Ankles have built a career out of refusing to look or sound like anyone else. The masked London crew’s first album for the storied The Leaf Label, Forest of Your Problems is ten tracks of what the label has taken to calling “nature techno”—acid-electro grooves, likembé percussion and rhythms that feel pulled straight from the undergrowth. It is the lockdown-era statement the label has been building towards, and already one of the most talked-about independent records of the summer.

The title track sets out the stall within seconds: a rubbery, squelching 303 line snaking over a stuttering electro beat, with a likembé melody plucked bright and brittle on top. There is a constant, twitchy energy to the sequencing, every bar alive with something rustling in the margins. The Evidence drives harder, its bassline leaning into the acid so far it occasionally sounds like it might tip over, whilst Shifting Basslines of the Cornucopians lives up to its daft name—a wonky, lurching carnival of a groove that keeps veering off in unexpected directions.

The band’s masked-identity performance angle—matching black outfits, full-face coverings, rarely seen out of costume—could be gimmickry, but here it feeds the music. There is a real theatricality to The Prince Is Back, all slinking disco-funk stabs and deadpan spoken word, and Rhythm Is Our Business winks at its 1930s namesake whilst turning it into a lean, minimalist club track. This is dance music with a sense of humour, and the record is all the better for it.

Where the record truly blooms is in its quieter, stranger corners. Susurrations (In the Forest) and Psithurhythm—the title a riff on psithurism, the sound of wind in trees—are the most literal expressions of the concept, all rustling textures and delicate percussion captured as if in a clearing rather than a studio. Closer Xylophobia (fear of forests, naturally) stretches out over seven and a half minutes, a slow-burning groove that builds until the masks feel like they’re staring straight back at you, before the brief Forest of Your Problems (Outro) dissolves everything back into birdsong and open air.

Forest of Your Problems is not for the purist. It is messy, funny and gloriously strange—more woodland ritual than warehouse rave. But in treating nature itself as a dancefloor, Snapped Ankles have made their most focused and rewarding record yet, one that rewards the patience its longer tracks demand. Seek it out before the festivals swallow the year.