They Call Me Steve releases debut album Escapism on Be Yourself Music
Some music waits. It sits in folders, half-finished and unlabeled, carrying a private logic that doesn’t translate into deadlines or rollout plans. Escapism sounds like that kind of record. Not newly made, but newly allowed to exist.
Released on Be Yourself Music, the album is the first full-length statement from They Call Me Steve, a name Jordi van Achthoven has carried quietly alongside his work as one half of Tinlicker. If Tinlicker is about shared direction and forward motion, this project feels like the opposite instinct: private, unhurried, unconcerned with momentum.
The material spans several years. Some tracks began as laptop sketches, others as fleeting ideas that never found a context until now. What’s striking is that van Achthoven hasn’t tried to disguise that history. Escapism doesn’t chase coherence through polish. It lets different moments coexist, bound together by mood rather than design. The record moves between club-adjacent rhythm and something more inward-facing, using everyday sounds and understated motifs to create a sense of proximity, as if you’re listening from inside the process rather than at its conclusion.
Early singles like Whatever You Call It, Body Move and Lara set the tone without explaining it. They function on a system, but they don’t perform for it. The grooves are patient, the arrangements restrained, the emotional weight carried by repetition rather than release. Nothing feels overstated. Nothing needs to prove itself.
Van Achthoven has spoken about Escapism as a space he hadn’t previously made public, and that discretion defines the record. It doesn’t reposition him, and it doesn’t ask to be read as a statement of intent. Instead, it runs quietly alongside his more visible work, offering a parallel view shaped by memory, habit and time spent away from the spotlight.
Escapism isn’t an exit. It’s a sidestep. A reminder that not all music is made to arrive. Some of it simply needs to be let go.
Escapism is out now on Be Yourself Music.
Tracklist
Celebrate
Whatever You Call It
Do You Think About Me
June 4th
Body Move
A Story
Lara
Life Has Changed
Want U
Hold Me Close
Sorry It Didn’t Work Out
Lonna Dewis
Love Was Here
You Called Me In A Dream
