“Loving this!”  – Tom Ravenscroft (BBC 6Music) 
“Beautiful, shimmering, almost delicate electronic music that falls somewhere between ambient, techno and sound design.” – Music Is My Sanctuary
“Berlin-based producer with a warm, explorative aesthetic, whose music treads the emotional fringes of electronic music.” – Loose Lips

Berlin-based producer Safejas steps fluidly between ambience and club-friendly experiments on four-track EP ‘Silk’. 

Having made an assured debut release with ‘Eyeline Inspector’ on the Brighton-based imprint WOE aka Wave of Endorphins (one of Bandcamp Daily’s recommended releases), Safejas returns with an EP that refines and expands on the sonic realms of the opening record.

In the artist’s words: “Silk EP explores an organic/inorganic duality. I was living by the sea when the tracks were made, and taking influence from that environment, whilst also becoming increasingly interested in super digital aesthetics. I was looking for the ways that these natural environments intersect with our digital ways of reimagining them.”


As ever, Safejas’ music feels intimately preoccupied with exploring the spacious quality of sound. ‘Silk’ gently swells and contracts, while ‘Kan’ immerses us in a crowd of disembodied human and electronic voices, abstract and multitudinal. Each uses the aesthetic of a limitless soundworld as an exploratory pathway, but Safejas is careful not to leave these horizons undisturbed, always taking the time to explore their creases and fractures. The use of featherlight and lithe percussion, one of Safejas’ most consistently satisfying calling cards and one which also characterised Eyeline Inspector, is vital in achieving this: on ‘Kan’ and ‘Silk’ hi-hats and chromatic snares skitter rather than bang, working on a microscopic level that teases through the momentum within the melodic side of the compositions. ‘Balance’ sees such attention to percussive detail reappropriated for a distinctly darker and dancefloor-ready track. Built for industrial spaces, but without falling into the big-room cliches that mark a straightforward techno track, ‘Balance’ surges brightly and burns out, find the same kind of sound design quirks that make the likes of Lanark Artefax such a thrilling listen. With these four tracks as evidence, one can rightly be excited about where the Safejas project might lead.

Lewis Shields aka Safejas is a Berlin-based producer working in the fractured seams of electronic music. Before he donned the Safejas moniker, Shields played bass and added electronics to various bands such as Good Guy Clarence in Brighton, and co-founded the live film scoring and audiovisual event Luma on the South coast. A resident on community radio station Threads, Safejas studied Music & Sonic Arts at the University of Sussex (alongside producer qgb) and has worked on collaborative interactive sound installations with experimental fashion brand Hieronymus.