London-based producer and composer Tom VR has always existed somewhere between the physical and the digital, the dancefloor and the ambient listening space. On his third album, Don’t Know How Fast I’m Moving Until I Hit Something, those worlds collide in a deeply personal record shaped by movement, burnout, live performance, and the moments that force us to stop.
Out now, the album began with its title track, an intense techno piece that races forward with the momentum of an unstoppable train. Rather than maintaining that pace indefinitely, the track eventually reaches a breaking point, transforming into something delicate and textural. That shift became the foundation for an album built around contrasting emotional states and the unpredictable ways life can change direction.
From there, Tom VR developed a collection that moves freely between euphoric club energy, ambient textures, romance, isolation, and experimentation. “Unlocked Love” and “Uplift! (Butterfly)” represent some of the album’s most immediate moments, pairing melodic techno with the kind of emotional release that comes alive when a crowd moves together.
Elsewhere, “Little New Heart” and “Wine Tasted Sour Without You” take a more introspective approach, turning toward romance, longing, and solitude. “Triple Whiplash” plays with the listener’s expectations by changing time signature midway through the track, creating a deliberate sense of instability. The album eventually settles into “New Meds (Landing Safely),” a quieter closing track centered on the idea of trying again.
The connection between the album and Tom VR’s live work is particularly strong on “Mag Fields.” The track originally grew from loops used during his live set, before his performance at Magnetic Fields Festival in India gave him the inspiration to complete it. Its climactic second half was taken directly from an improvisation performed onstage, preserving a moment that could otherwise have existed only once.
That relationship with audiences extends throughout the album. Field recordings captured during live performances appear between tracks, effectively making the listeners who experienced the music in real time part of the finished record. Rather than treating the album and live show as separate experiences, Tom VR allows one to continuously feed into the other.
The record’s title reflects the personal realization at its core. For Tom VR, the constant momentum of creating, performing, and pushing forward eventually became difficult to distinguish from simply being on autopilot.
“It came from recognising this constant tendency of mine to move forward rapidly without stopping, often resulting in periods of burnout. I was just always on, always pushing myself further and further, almost completely in cruise control, like I was in the passenger seat. Then major things happen in your life. You hit something. Moments of chaos and uncertainty, moments of sheer joy and elation — they hit like whiplashes in opposite directions. Instead of moving through it all blindly, I started to acknowledge each thing for what it was and frame them all as one well-rounded experience.”
That idea of momentum, interruption, and recalibration also informs the album’s larger audiovisual concept. Don’t Know How Fast I’m Moving Until I Hit Something sits at the center of an immersive digital universe inspired by Dragon’s Gate, a photographic series by Oscar-nominated filmmaker and photographer Pen Densham.
Using the imagery as a starting point, Tom VR created custom 3D oceans, landscapes, and fluid environments designed to evolve alongside the music. The result expands the album beyond a traditional collection of tracks, creating a visual world where sound and imagery continually influence one another.
That kind of crossover has become increasingly central to Tom VR’s work. His performances have taken place in both physical venues and virtual environments, including Fortnite through Coachella’s Sahara Island, where he performed alongside Grimes, as well as performances staged inside Minecraft.
His audiovisual work has also appeared in established cultural spaces. He has collaborated on projects exhibited at the Barbican Centre with Max Cooper and at Outernet London with HAAi, further establishing a practice that refuses to place music, technology, and visual art into separate boxes.
The album arrives during another active period for Tom VR, following recent remixes for Verses GT and Salamanda, a collaboration with John Beltran, and sold-out performances at Fabric and other venues across London. Recent appearances at Wonderfruit and Magnetic Fields have further connected his studio work to the live environments that helped shape the new record.
Along the way, his work has received support and attention from Ransom Note, MusicRadar, Resident Advisor, and Attack, reflecting an artistic trajectory that has consistently moved between club culture, experimental composition, and digital art.
With Don’t Know How Fast I’m Moving Until I Hit Something, Tom VR turns that constant motion into the album’s central creative language. The result is a record that can move from a euphoric dancefloor to an intimate moment of reflection without losing its sense of purpose — a portrait of what happens when an artist finally slows down long enough to understand everything that has been moving around him.
Tom VR: INSTAGRAM | SOUNDCLOUD | BANDCAMP | SPOTIFY