Kevin de Vries makes his Tomorrowland Music debut: 'Pegasus'

Rolling synth waves over a beat with real punch and no fuss anywhere in it, deep and hypnotic and somehow lifting at the same time. That’s ‘Pegasus’, and its strength is how little it actually does. Kevin de Vries put it out on 24 March through Tomorrowland Music, his first for the label and his first original of 2023.

He’d been playing it for the better part of a year before anybody could buy it. The track was in his sets around the world all through last season, Tomorrowland Belgium included, which means an enormous number of people had already heard this record without ever knowing what it was called. That’s a particular kind of confidence. He had the thing finished, he had the reaction in front of him every weekend, and he sat on it anyway until 24 March.

The patience makes more sense once you know what came before. Last year’s ‘Dance With Me’ landed on Afterlife and became one of the most played tracks of the entire festival season, picked up a Kölsch remix, and dragged a long tail of edits behind it. De Vries is a fixture there and sits near the very top of this particular scene, so putting a debut somewhere else looks like a deliberate move on his part.

The drop is where you’ll hear what he’s actually good at. It’s elegant, it doesn’t announce itself, and it works precisely because everything around it has been kept simple enough to let it land. Put it on somewhere with a low end worth using, give it the whole run, and make your mind up about Tomorrowland Music’s newest signing after that.