Image credit:  Marta Michalak

VTSS shares hypnotically deconstructed club track ‘For your safety’, the 2nd single to be released from forthcoming EP “Projections”. Out 28th January, the record marks the Polish-born, London based producer’s first release for Ninja Tune imprint Technicolour, in which her increasingly expansive musical persona shines through. 

Speaking more on the single, VTSS said “‘For your safety’ is the 2nd single from my “Projections” EP containing all my lockdown archives, dreams & visions. The track made in ‘20 captures the moment of a personal breakthrough, after months of anxiety, dying hopes & dreams; my own process of re-interpreting the outside world and re-joining the forever changed society as a person & artist”.

“Projections” is, she says, a “new chapter” that simultaneously represents a fresh direction and a return to her experimental roots. This hybrid of style is found on the EP’s lead single, ‘Trust me’, a sub-110 BPM crawler with toms for fists, also reflecting an ear attuned to fine-grained detail. Support came from RA who said “‘Trust Me’ makes an impression far larger than its sub-two-minute runtime would imply…It all sounds kind of bonkers, and it disappears just when you’ve wrapped your head around it—but that only makes it and every one of its heavily-treated sounds all the more tantalising”. Additional praise came from the likes of DJ Mag, The Quietus and Mixmag who included it in their ‘best tracks of 2021’ list, saying it’s “filled to the brim with rattling percussion, eerie pulsating static and satisfying bangs on the bass drum, the track is an alluring invite to check out what’s coming next.”

Elsewhere on the EP we hear a AFX hall-of-mirrors on opener ‘The need to avoid’, to the gabber yelps of ‘Propaganda of success’, which echoes the heritage of vintage drill & bass while honouring that style’s innate sense of humour and reflecting VTSS’s own irrepressible persona. Equal parts moody and freaky, the EP’s off-step tempos and laser-maze drum patterns are an inventive foil to VTSS’s industrious four-to-the-floor bruisers, a continuation of ideas she introduced into her music on ‘Woah’, from recent EP “Borderline Tenderness” on VEYL, which featured 2021 club anthem ‘Goin Nuts’, a collaboration with LSDXOXO. During 2021 VTSS also provided an outstanding BBC Essential Mix, graced the cover of Mixmag in November and launched her very own striking fashion line in collaboration with alternative clothing label A Better Mistake. 

“Projections” introduces a new phase of VTSS’s catalogue, with more new music to come in 2022. It’s nimble drum architecture and scattered tempos express, on the one hand, a desire to break away from familiar ideas, and on the other, a single-minded pursuit of self-expression.

‘For your safety’ is out now with “Projections” EP out 28th Jan 2022, and more new music on Ninja Tune coming soon.  

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