FEATURE: Spotlight: HAAi — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

HAAi

__________

AN artist I have not…

featured yet, it is time to come to HAAi. The Australian-born, British-based D.J. and artist has been on the scene for a long time. Years. However, as she has released HUMANiSE very recently, it is a perfect time to spotlight her. Earlier this month, HAAi spoke with JunoDaily, who was interviewed around the release of her brilliant second studio album. It is one of the standout albums of the year. I will end with a positive review for HUMANiSE:

“I’ve always been a bit of a glitchy girl when it comes to my music production,” laughs HAAi, aka Teneil Throssell. “To me, it’s when music tech goes wrong that it’s at its most exciting, there’s just so much beauty in it.”

From playing records in the divey boozers of East London to today’s globe-straddling DJ diary packed with over 100 shows across five continents in 2024, Teneil is one of the hardest working selectors and producers in the UK.

Signed with iconic electronic label Mute since 2019, her trajectory so far has taken in her debut, ‘Baby, We’re Ascending’, a DJ Kicks compilation and her heavy-hitting collaboration with Fred Again… and Romy, ‘Lights Out’. The soon-to-be-released second album, HUMANiSE, is the latest installment in this creative journey smudging the lines between psychedelia, mind-expanding electronics and dubby dancefloor thrum. When we speak, Teneil is beaming enthusiastically from a hotel room in Mexico in the midst of a North American tour. A week later, we witnessed her rule the Saturday night of the Convenanza festival in the medieval castle of Carcassonne in France. She’s clearly a thriving artist in glorious flow, armed with a record to explode the fallout from our addiction to AI and algorithms.

“I wanted there to be two sides to the album’s personality, one to represent machine learning and technology, then also the human element with the storytelling, the lived experiences via the vocals of myself, the choir and the other contributors,” says Teneil.

“Rather than be opposed, this is about bringing these things together and learning how they can co-exist.”

Writing and co-producing with her friend Pat Alverez helped enhance how she channelled and pinned down her ideas. Teneil believes the uncertainties of life as a solo artist can leave you open to questioning the quality of your endeavours.

“Sometimes you can tear your hair out when you’re working on your music yourself,” she explains. “But with Pat and Jon Hopkins, I found people to quell any concerns, particularly as these worries sometimes make me wonder if I’m on the right path. But ‘Satellite’ was the first track, then I just got into the rhythm of it to the point where I chatted with management to say: ‘I think I’m actually writing an album’.”

Born in Karratha, Western Australia, and spending her formative musical years in Sydney, Teneil moved to the UK as part of the psych-rock outfit Dark Bells before the band split. Jon Hopkins is a long-term collaborator she met in its aftermath who helped her tap into songwriting alongside its ability to showcase the potential transcendence of the dancefloor.

“I did some sessions with Jon for HUMANiSE, he’s such a good friend and a great collaborator to bounce ideas off,” she says. “We talked a lot about technology, what our feelings are about fast-paced machine learning that seems to be interfering in everything. The theme for the record came out of these conversations.”

Making music on tour has also meant she’s been able to get instant feedback on any of the tracks she has designed with the dancefloor in mind. This part of the process – on moments like ‘Hey!’ from HUMANiSE – have shown her how there is a strong link between production and how she would play them out.

“I’m currently working on this big remix project, and it’s been a good way of doing it, to make it while on the road,” Teneil says. “As I’m making the tracks, I’m thinking about little moments or how they might open up a set. One of my favourite ways to write is on a plane contemplating how something would work at a festival or in a club show that night. But with HUMANiSE, most of it is far more intimate or not for the dancefloor so no one has heard it other than my management and girlfriend. I’m now excited to see how it will translate to a wider audience”.

Moving on to CLASH, who noted how HAAi gets personal on her new album. I must admit I was not aware of her music until earlier this year. She is this extraordinary multitalented and someone I am fascinated in now. Despite her relatively long career so far, I think it is important to spotlight HAAi now, as this feature is not only for brand-new artists:

“HUMANiSE’ also showcases HAAi’s fascination with performance as world-building, now fully realised in ‘HUMANiSE’ (live album performance, from Drumsheds)—a film by New Vision Originals capturing a live, immersive interpretation of her new album. The performance unfolds inside a meticulously crafted installation of a ‘90s office: a time capsule lined with ring binders, Rolodexes, fax machines, reams of A4 paper, and landline telephones—reimagined within the cavernous shell of London’s Drumsheds. Styled and dressed by TOGA Archives, HAAi and her collaborators—Jon Hopkins, Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip), Obi Franky, KAM-BU, TRANS VOICES, and queer activist Kaiden Ford—inhabit this surreal workspace, weaving in and out of filing cabinets as the conceptual world of the album unfolds in real time.

“I’ve always had this dream of doing something that is purely immersive and having people from the audience be part of the set itself… it’s definitely ambitious, but that’s something that’s kept me up at night for years,” she says. ‘HUMANiSE’ embodies this vision, blurring the line between performer and listener and emphasizing that music is a shared, human experience. The album, out now via Mute, reckons with what it is to be human in an increasingly digital world as AI threatens to eclipse everything and our screens separate us from each other. Through collaboration and community, HAAi explores the importance of a sense of togetherness and hope.

The album’s glitchy, unpredictable nature mirrors the volatility of the technologies it reflects. HAAi revels in frequency shifts, stutters, and abrupt structural changes, highlighting the friction between human emotion and machine precision. In ‘Shapeshift’, featuring KAM-BU, a laidback spoken word section grows into complex rhythmic layers, a sonic metaphor for duality — the person we are onstage versus the one we inhabit privately.

HAAi’s vocals, fragile yet commanding, thread through the album, bringing warmth to complex sound design. “I wanted this ‘human heart’ to be front and centre,” she reiterates, emphasizing the balance of vulnerability and technical mastery. Tracks like ‘Stitches’ and ‘Voices’ create moments of euphoric, dreamlike emotional clarity, while ‘New Euphoria’, with Alexis Taylor and TRANS VOICES, encapsulates the album’s communal spirit: “Even though ‘HUMANiSE’ is about how the world is starting to change beyond our control, it’s important to keep a sense of togetherness and hope”.

The Quietus spent time with HAAi (Teneil Throssell) about her music and this extraordinary new album. HUMANiSE is a very appropriate title. The Quietus explain how, as our relationships and lives are directed and dicatetd by algorithms, HAAi’s new album “finds a counterforce in the joy of real-life connection”:

“The concept of HUMANiSE was simple: re-centre vocals in her music and explore sounds away from the dancefloor. The result is a collection of tunes, somewhere between dance tracks and songs, incorporating a haze of reflections and tender confessions of care without the sacrifice of a techno thrum. Think: the morning after a rave, cuddling on your friend’s couch, braindead sipping coffee and Pedialyte, cracking up all the while. HAAi hasn’t lost her channel changer’s sensibility, and the songs are full of tricks and musical double entendres but more mid-tempo and wintery.

Nearly every track is toplined by her voice or one from her found family of collaborators (most of them appear on multiple tracks or on her previous full length record.) On ‘New Euphoria’, a 120 bpm slow build, Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip calls out with a mechanically fragmented voice that is answered by the celestial echoes of the Trans Voices choir. When writing the song, HAAi envisioned a wistful cyborg character, part-human part-android, embodied by Taylor’s voice. “I wanted it to be this yearning relationship between a person and something that wasn’t totally human – but a very sweet one.”

According to HAAi, the presence of technology is also central to the performance. “The film itself is a reaction to how we digest music,” she says. “It leans into the idea of what Humanise is: trusting technology but knowing it can be volatile as well.” She points out the way that algorithms, everywhere from Spotify to TikTok, are shaping both the kinds of music that find an audience, where they can encounter them. It’s one of the reasons why she chose to write the album and has been experimenting with ways to bring more live performances with her onstage. As for machine learning and other technological factors shaping nightlife, she’s a realist. She wants to find ways to coexist that can protect the livelihoods of people who have found a career and a community in nightlife.

“One of the biggest parts of DJing is your connection with people. I’m looking, I’m seeing, and I’m taking my own experiences of what I’ve loved when I’ve been on a dancefloor, and showing that to people. You’re reading, whether it’s being received or not ,and making changes in what you’re doing based on that. I don’t see how you can bottle that,” says HAAi”.

I am going to return to CLASH and their review of HUMANiSE. In their words: “Electronic maven foregrounds her voice on an intimate, almost confessional album…”. I do think that HUMANiSE is one of the best albums of this year. If you have not discovered HAAi, then you really need to follow her:

“From the opening moments of ‘Satellite’ – a collaboration with Jon Hopkins, Obi Franky, ILĀ, and TRANS VOICES – the album establishes its dual ambition: the synthetic and the organic, the ecstatic and the tender. Layered with choirs, delicate vocal lines, and sweeping synths, the track sets the tone for a record that never settles into a single mood. It’s a record of contrasts: machine-driven beats meet rich, human emotion; ecstatic grooves sit alongside moments of stillness and reflection.

HAAi’s vocals, previously a subtle thread in her work, are a revelation here. On tracks like ‘Can’t Stand To Lose’ and ‘All That Falls Apart, Comes Together’ (featuring poet James Massiah), her voice carries vulnerability without ever feeling fragile. These are songs that demand attention, not only for their sonic ambition but for their ability to make space for the listener to inhabit them fully. HAAi’s decision to foreground her voice is more than a stylistic choice—it’s a statement, a reminder that even in a world driven by machines and screens, music remains a profoundly human experience.

The album’s collaborative spirit reinforces this theme. HAAi draws on a network of friends and collaborators—from Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and rapper KAM-BU to Kaiden Ford and choirs led by ILĀ and Wendi Rose—to craft a sense of community. There’s a generosity here: ‘HUMANiSE’ doesn’t feel like an individual statement so much as an invitation into a shared emotional space. Tracks like ‘Shapeshift’ and ‘New Euphoria’ are not only sonically thrilling but also feel alive with the energy of collective creation.

Despite its sprawling ambition, ‘HUMANiSE’ never loses sight of its core. It is an album about connection in an age of digital distraction, a reminder that emotion and empathy remain central to the human experience. HAAi navigates complex textures, breakbeats, and anthemic synths without letting the album feel cold or detached. Instead, ‘HUMANiSE’ is warm, immersive, and grounded, a record that can transport you to both the dancefloor and an introspective space within minutes.

From the pounding, kinetic drive of ‘Go’ (feat. Kaiden Ford) to the cinematic dreaminess of ‘Rushing’ (feat. ILĀ & TRANS VOICES), the album is a testament to HAAi’s range and vision. Each track has its own identity, yet together they form a cohesive narrative about resilience, connection, and the beauty of shared experience. There’s a tension throughout, between exhilaration and intimacy, that keeps the listener engaged from start to finish.

In a landscape saturated with electronic music that often prioritizes spectacle over substance, HAAi has crafted something rare: a record that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally generous. ‘HUMANiSE’ is not just a collection of tracks; it is a vision of what electronic music can be when it embraces vulnerability, community, and the human heart. For anyone who has experienced HAAi’s DJ sets, the album captures that same sense of euphoria and attention to detail—but adds an intimate, almost confessional dimension that feels wholly original”.

I shall leave it there. I am late to HAAi, though I do feel that it is a perfect time to explore her music and her wonderful second album. You can see her upcoming gigs and a chance to see HAAi. HUMANiSE is a perfect balance of the energy, euphoria and D.J. experience, as CLASH state, with something intimae and confessional. Such a deep album that you will come to over and over again, everyone needs HAAi…