New York producer Vitesse X used to make shoegaze. It makes sense that she was drawn to George Clanton’s 100% Electronica movement (née label), known for their futuristic chill and vaporwave and most recently, their cyber-rave VR events that streamed over the course of lockdown. It was here that Vitesse X introduced her brand of mid-tempo techno and eurotrance to the world, a style that evolves her shoegaze roots toward the golden age of the rave scene. Her debut, Us Ephemeral, is an album that looks to fully establish her style and identity as an electronic musician. Drawing from 90’s and 2000’s dance music styles like trance, techstep, and eurodance her music sits somewhere in between the new wave of hard hitting rave in the vein of Chippy Nonstop and the dream trance of Robert Miles. It’s mellow, yet still propulsive, mostly taking shape as pop songs featuring Vitesse X’s dreamy, ethereal vocals against hyperactive backdrops of breaks and sub-bass that clock in at under four minutes.
Us Ephemeral is an album that wears its references on its sleeve. It’s easy to trace the points of departure on tracks like Activation, which throws a version of the throbbing riff from Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head against bubblegumy 90’s rave breakbeats. Potential Energy finds itself in similar territory, fusing 2000’s techstep and trance EDM. The album’s top half seems to take more of a pop focus, with Vitesse X singing across most of the songs here. Spaces recalls the wave of late 90’s and early 2000’s eurotrance pop in the vein of Sonique’s It Feels So Good or Alice Deejay. Her shoegaze roots show up on Rash Devices, with its dubby, reverb soaked guitar plucks and soft, fluttering breakbeat. Yet while Vitesse X makes a compelling argument, tracks like these lapse quickly into formulaic territory and risk feeling insipid or lacking in any sort of personality that defines them as her own, rather than a smart synthesis of her references.
Centrifuge Me, possibly the most ‘dancey’ track on the record, swaps the lyrics for a spacey vocal hook and 90’s rave synths with a drill’n’bass beat. It’s one of the album’s most accomplished moments, a successful intertwining of her retro-rave influences into something that sounds familiar yet fresh, but also bursting with more personality than Us Ephemeral’s more pop-leaning exploits. The two-step trance of Gated Boom is another standout in this regard, and together these tracks offer a glimpse at the potential of Vitesse X. And there’s tons of potential here. Looking at the current new rave scene, the soundscape is dominated mostly by breakneck and sledgehammering gabber-tech or head banging bubblegum bass. There’s room for Vitesse X’s dreamier, spacier, shoegaze-ier stylisation of the rave formula, a revival of a style that was hugely influential back its heyday. She’s a student of her influences, and it’s apparent that she understands the physics of this style. Given time, developing it away from what she might consider obligatory (lyrics, some trope-y stabs and motifs) could make for something game changing.
Watch the music video for Centrifuge Me from Us Ephemeral below. Download and listen to the album here.
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