Vitesse

by Jason AnkenyIndie synth-pop duo Vitesse teamed keyboardists Hewson Chen and Josh Klein, the latter a former drummer with the band Toulouse as well as a staff writer with the cult-favorite weekly paper The Onion. The duo first collaborated in 1997 on a piece for their Intro to Music Composition class at the University of Chicago; as Vitesse, they recorded their debut LP A Certain Hostility over the course of some 36 hours in late 1998, releasing the album on the Hidden Agenda label the following spring. A year later, the lush, morose Chelsea 27099 arrived, again on Hidden Agenda. Their next effort, What Can Not Be, But Is..., is jokingly referred to as a "surprisingly long EP" by the band, but it was actually a full length compilation of leftover tracks and covers. In the fall of 2002, the poppy You Win Again Gravity was released, an impressive record that recalled the vintage sounds of OMD and New Order.