With Rat Trap Tool Box, Furtive returns with a cheeky release of locked-loop mixing tools, spun off from the wriggly energy of the April 2020 concept album Rave Rats.

Rat Trap Tool Box comprises 15 locked loops, scampering across genres and tempos: included are tracks of densely layered psychedelic techno, crooked acid lines, jagged and warping drum’n’bass, electroid scribbles, acerbic industrial hardcore, and miscellaneous wingdings.

Initially envisioned as an experiment in locked-groove-style mixing tools for looping on CDJs, the Rat Trap Tool Box series quickly became an exercise in building heady, psychoacoustically stimulating loops, and subsequently a format for melting Furtive’s languishing draft-bin dregs down into functional and effective set tools.

All 15 tracks have static 4-minute arrangements, but are sonically far from static: each track is vividly detailed with perpetually-shifting textures for maintaining energy and entrancing dancers. No parameters changes are automated or recorded in the arrangement - the illusory motion stems from carefully tuned, irregularly-timed modulators working in concert.

Furtive’s album Rave Rats is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the people building precious underground communities and tending to vital shared spaces and experiences.

Rat Trap Tool Box riffs on the "rave rat" concept on several fronts, tapping into general ratty resourcefulness and the creative use of tools and improvised infrastructure by DIY dance-denizens - the eponymous “rave rats.” As short, static tracks, these tools can't stand on their own, just as a single freak gyrating in a basement isn't a rave. These mixing tools - like every ingredient, effort, and dancer behind a tasty, frothing rave - are elements that can somehow magically add up to an experience far greater than the sum of its parts.

While broadly, the ratty concept celebrates the masterminds, spreadsheets, muscles, heartstrings, achy joints, “stuffy” noses, woggly pupils, and comfy shoes of a good, transformative rave, Rat Trap Tool Box focuses on the second-to-second mechanics of dancefloor hypnotism: the DJs and their strategic selection. The enclosed 15 tracks are tools for slick dancefloor magic, lubricated aural illusions, and expanded sensory blending.

To peel a paraphrase out of Rave Rats: metaphorically, the “rave rats” are the tenacious underground lifers, the ultimate survivalists who will keep building their little club-like rave nests despite the odds. They’re the underground’s subversion of the expected, normative, and mainstream. They’re the embodiment of a machine-funk-punk ethos that undergirds the values of the rave. They’re the mutual dreams bubbling up inside curious skulls.

15 cuts of truncated 4-minute doodles barely speak to these lofty concepts, but hopefully in the right hands, these tidbits and tools can someday be lent to conjuring magical dancefloor moments.