Two years after introducing her retro-futuristic take on house and D&B with a debut album appropriately titled Us Ephemeral, Brooklyn’s Vitesse X returns today with all the details surrounding her sophomore effort, This Infinite. Arriving October 4 via her own label Music Website, the new LP notably features production from Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum and Pearly Drops, as well as an impressive team of behind-the-scenes collaborators in Abe Seiferth, Jorge Elbrecht, and Joe Laporta. Together, they help Vitesse reconfigure her debut’s homage to ’90s club music into something more futuristic, with lead single “Eternal” taking the form of epic sci-fi pop fusing together moaning shoegaze guitar and a spritely drum-and-bass beat as its interplanetary vessel.
As Vitesse explains it, this wasn’t initially the direction This Infinite took when she began developing it. “I was working on a dark, atmospheric electronic record for nearly a year and a half following the release of my first album,” she recalls. “Throughout this time, so many things started shifting in my life and the world as a whole. At the beginning, translating my heavy emotions into dark, driving and enveloping electronic soundscapes made sense. It felt like a fluid, natural catharsis. But by the second half of 2023, the world started feeling unbearably paralyzing. Between the loss of significant friendships, livelihood uncertainties, and the violence happening in the world, it was all too real and my mental health was significantly waning for the first time in years. At this point, I had no coping mechanisms to really get me by, except for my own nostalgia.”
She notes that it was at this point that guitar began finding its way into her work rather than synths, buoying her creative spirit and, ironically, helping to develop the sense of alienation the record speaks to. “It brought me back to a time where things felt simple, unaffected, warm, and textured. It gave me a sense of connection within my deep isolation, a feeling of ‘home’ on unfamiliar land.”
“Eternal” comes paired with a music video directed by Chris Burden, which illustrates the track’s balance of naturalism and science fiction heard in the conversation between guitar and space-age ambiance. Check it out below, and stream the single here.
