In conversation with HAAi

How would you describe music without using sound? Australian-born, London-based DJ and producer HAAi arrives at a tenderhearted answer, not with words, but through the Ableton push pads. Leaving behind the lower minor key belonging to the moody shoegaze scene and guitar-led noise, her nosedive into electronic music brought us bangers that shook London’s dancefloors and beyond. Something is stirring beneath the surface of HAAi’s upcoming work, a pulse that we felt with the release of the track “Can’t Stand To Lose“, performed recently at Glamcult TV. With “HUMANiSE”, she explores the lining of frequencies, offering not only experimental soundscapes but, in its periodicity, a familiar place to call home. Featuring Jon Hopkins, Obi Frankie, ILĀ, and the vocal collective Trans Voices, the album becomes a joint offering – a queer anthem in motion. But it doesn’t settle into identity alone. Instead, “HUMANiSE” stretches toward something communal, a call for tenderness in the digital and increasingly divisive age. Out this autumn on October 10, the record asks what it means to find yourself,  to connect, and to be witnessed. HAAi’s sound may be electronic, but her intention is unmistakably human. We had the opportunity to sit for a chat, eager to get to know her better, and the conversation gave us a glimpse of her vibrant self. Read on, and soak up her stories of joy bringers, the importance of queer identities and her call to communal action.

Hi Haai! How are you feeling this week?
It’s been a bit of a rocky week, but I feel great today. I’m very excited to leave for our tour tomorrow, and I’ve got a big announcement happening on Wednesday, which I’m excited about.

Oh, tell us more about this announcement!
Sure thing! My album gets announced next Wednesday, on the 28th. It’s been such a long rollercoaster to get to this point, and I feel glad that we’re so close. It’s getting announced with a track called “Satellite”, which is a collaboration between me, Jon Hopkins, Obi Frankie, ILĀ and the vocal collective Trans Voices that we’ve been working with during the whole album. We’ve just done live sessions together recently, and it was all really special. The collective was also incredible. I’ve worked with the founder of the collective before, Ilā Kamalagharan, who is a very good friend of mine. We met on a fashion project a few years ago, and we hit it off right away. I had just heard about Trans Voices and had wanted to work with them. Ilā and I were in an elevator together, and I was looking up the collective when I saw a picture of her on their socials, and I was like, “Oh my god, is this you?”

That does sound witchy!
Yeah, and I felt that we were sharing a special moment, and we’ve been working together sort of on and off for a few years, which is great.

Do you feel like you have converging inspirations with them?
Definitely. The singers are incredible, and it’s been really inspiring, because everyone comes from different musical backgrounds as well, ranging from contemporary, operatic and classical, and everyone’s voices worked so nicely together. I ended up collaborating with the choir on maybe four or five songs on the album. I’m sure there are even more songs with them that didn’t make it into the album, but I want to do something with them later at some point. The album is called “HUMANiSE”, which is about being more human, and having so many amazing voices as part of the focal point has been such a big experience.

How is it different from your previous records or projects in general?
I would say it leans into songwriting. For example, I felt like “Baby Is Ascending”, as a whole body of work, is very much about experimentation and me wanting to almost produce a musical, while leaning into frequencies. While I feel like I’ve done this before, I wanted to put these aspects at the forefront. The songs and the stories told in them all make sense together, and I’m excited to show this other side of myself to people who maybe only know me for dance music.

Can you tell me about the way you grew up – the places, the inspiration, the most formative experiences that made you grow into your musical person?
My whole background is sort of psych and shoegaze bands, so I’ve always leaned into guitar music a lot and songwriting, and that was what made me move to the UK. Growing up, I used to listen to artists like The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and other amazing Australian bands from the 80s that we sort of discovered well after they came out. Then, when I moved to the UK, I was still part of a more shoegaze-oriented band, which I really loved, and I’m still very good friends with the members. Along the way, the more electronic stuff kind of found me more than I found it. These days, the genres have merged, but back when I was playing in bands, there was a kind of division between techno kids and guitar kids, and I think that’s maybe what took me so long to understand it. Then I did the classic, “Let’s go to a Techno party”, and the rest is history. I mean, there is more to the story, but that was the nuts and bolts of it.

I love that electronic music found you, like it was meant to happen. If you had to describe your music to someone without using sound, how would you do it?
I would say frequency-heavy, emotional, and storytelling.

And what do you feel the primary emotions of your music are?
I would say the main one is nostalgia. For this album in particular, it’s very introspective, and there are a lot of songs about places that I grew up in my childhood, about queerness, and where I was at the time. I wouldn’t say that the words exactly say that lyrically, but if you kind of scratch beneath the surface of it, I think it makes a lot of sense.

Do you think people listening to it will feel the same things that you put into it?
I guess there are two ways to look at it. There’s always just looking at it literally, through the words that you wrote at the time. But then, I think there’s so much importance in the interpretation and that goes for the album as well. I hope that the queer storytelling comes through, and that it finds a place for everyone who’s kind of had a time in their life when they feel like they are searching for an identity. It’d be nice for people to understand it for what it is. But either way, I would urge anyone just to interpret it in whichever way it kind of makes you feel something, without it sort of sounding too cheesy.

What do you hope people take away from your music?
I feel like there’s definitely an air of hopefulness in a lot of the songs, even with “Baby We’re Ascending”, which has a slightly emotional tone to it. I just did a choral version of “Baby We’re Ascending” with the Trans Voices that we performed live for this thing the other day, and I was mixing the session yesterday, and I listened to it, and it’s so beautiful. I remember it was just us in the middle of a 15,000 capacity room while we were filming the song, and everyone who was present, including the crew, was speechless. It was really special for me to perform that song with them.

I would be so curious to hear and see. How do you see queerness in the way it converges with your music-making?
I see it in a bunch of different ways. I work with a mostly queer team in production. When I make music, especially given the themes of the tracks, it just makes sense to create it with my community. It’s not that it’s a prerequisite to work with someone, but sometimes it just makes sense. Also I find that queer people naturally kind of find each other pretty easily. I’ve mentioned storytelling a bunch of times, but I feel like that’s probably another real way, because it’s a more literary way to get it across. 

Totally. It’s also very uplifting that you’re telling queer stories while getting the community directly involved. Are you the kind of person who can create when feeling low?
When I’m feeling low, which has happened a bit this year because of all the things going on both privately and in the world, while simultaneously trying to keep up with everything, and also being tuned in to what the fuck is happening. This, to me, is the killer of creativity. I need to maintain a good, steady mood. That doesn’t mean I have to be doing cartwheels to make music, but just being in a good mood is helpful for me. I feel like if I’m not doing great, I just have this anxiety about opening up Ableton. I’ll do it, and then I’ll just close my laptop right back up. But it hasn’t always been this way. When I started in bands, there was this real thing of everyone romanticising people’s misery for art, which I understand is a real tool for some people, but can also glorify people’s sadness a lot. I’m very grateful that my urge to create stuff usually comes from a place of feeling good. I think my music would sound a lot different if it didn’t. Yeah, I feel like, especially in the more shoegazy realm, sadness is this great vault of inspiration. 

If there were three things that you could classify as the utmost joy bringers, what would they be?
Stepping into an overgrown water reservoir full of nature and swimming with baby geese and ducks, without a phone and just having the sun shine, recharges my joy reserves so much, so that’s a big one. This other thing might sound quite cheesy, but I’ve got a close friend of mine, Orla. She does this thing where she comes over unannounced. She did this last night, and it turned the day around so much, and I really appreciated that. I love spontaneity because so much of my life is so planned and diarised. So, having spontaneous moments with friends is another real biggie.

On the flip side, what are some off-putting things, either in music or beyond, that you want either yourself or people to let go of?
There’s this division that I’ve felt recently in our scene, not to mention politically and globally, but also locally, with spaces like clubs where everyone’s fighting and quick to point fingers outwards instead of inwards when we’re all fighting for the same thing in the end. People would rather have this immediate win of saying “you’re doing that wrong” or “we’re going to cancel you” rather than acknowledging that we’re all fighting for the same cause, and should do so together. There are points where things need to be called out publicly, but I think when it comes down to people and opinions, there’s so much that gets caught up in this machine of online conversation where nuance is lost.

I agree, and I feel like so many people feel the same, but it might just be difficult to make this way of thinking more tangible. How do you get around with it?
I had this round table conversation with the local government, venue owners and creators, and it was so interesting having everyone sit around the table just talking about the things that are impacting us. Hearing other people’s points of view on it and having a healthy discussion surrounding it. It’s not always possible to do that with everything, but I thought it was such a privilege to get to do that about something that directly impacts the scene here, and it just made me think I wish we could do it more. I think something is happening where people have become scared to take action and not go with the flow at the moment, and I wish that we could remember that our strength is together. As cheesy as it sounds, the more that we divide, the less that we’re going to be able to succeed in the bigger battles that we have.

Amen! My last question would be, what are your dreams for the future?
The thing that I really hope to have is a thriving music scene where people celebrate each other and there’s an abundance of parties and festivals, and things that everyone can be a part of. On a global scale, this is obviously a whole different thing. A safer, peaceful world for everyone would be the main focus.

I couldn’t have said that better. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and I’m excited to listen to the album!