There is a specific kind of magic that happens in the ‘borrowed spaces’ of NYC — the unfinished buildings and transit corridors where sound travels between rooms. illspeed, a loose collective dreamt up on a Queens-bound N train, thrives in these gaps. Their debut single, Freedom, out now, is less of a traditional track and more of a shared atmosphere, as we can both listen and watch in the music video that comes with it.
Musically, Freedom flips the script: melody carries the weight usually reserved for rhythm, while synths lean forward into a space where sound, image, and light are treated as one continuous channel. There are no predictable drops or grand releases here. Instead, the song mirrors our modern visual culture: layered, interrupted, and resisting the urge to flatten reality. The lyrics are sparse but hit with an almost inevitable weight. When they sing, “all we have to do / is take these lies / and make them true somehow,” it isn’t a clarification of the music so much as a marking of presence. The refrain, “I don’t belong to you / and you don’t belong to me,” anchors the project’s core philosophy: freedom isn’t a grand statement, but something that appears when attention is shared and held long enough.
The music video continues this reflection on today’s times: it’s also layered, a bunch of images superimposed and interconnected in an apparently random way. They evoke some of the earliest, DIY YouTube videos that millennials spent hours watching time and time again: fun fairs and rollercoasters, cute animals, memes, people skating, dancing, or doing any kind of outdoor activity. This collage feels free, just like the title of the song, as well as intimate, taking us back to a time when we didn’t worry about the digital footprint and humour permeated social media.
This intimacy sets the stage for the upcoming Surrender EP on the illspeed label at the end of April. Across the three tracks (Freedom, Duplicant, and Surrender), the collective explores what they call “rhythmless blues,” a sound built on proximity rather than rigid identity. By the time the EP concludes, nothing feels quite resolved, leaving you staring at the music like a doorway to a version of yourself you don’t fully recognise yet.