Electronic queer HAAi gives us a new album and a wonderful reflective film, about fear, friendship, and who people can really be when they are their true selves.
HAAi is releasing a fantastic follow up to her first album “Baby We’re Ascending”, with this multi layered album called ‘HUMANiSE’ on October 10th. An opus of ideas about technology, human connection, sexual and gender identity, with the Trans Voices Choir. She mentioned in this interview about something special coming out with the album. That something special is a concept film along with all the music of the album, with the Trans Voices, Jon Hopkins, and all the other beautiful misfits. This time around she has something for everyone.
I am going to be honest, watching the film (see below), I made it just over the 1:33 mark before I was a sobbing mess. HAAI outdid herself this time around.
Jeremy Hinks: So, HAAi, thank you for coming back. I see the Portugal hat, but that’s not where you are, is it?
HAAi: Hello, thanks for having me back. I’m back home in my flat in England for a couple of days, then back on the road for the foreseeable future.
JH: Yes, I know the drill. I’ve been on tours.
H: Well, I have such a deep love of traveling, and that side of the job, it can be long at points, comes with the territory. I’ve got a pretty compact travel studio, so I can kind of multitask. The Trans-Atlantic trips for me, you know what you are in for and the length of time, so you can set yourself up properly. I played this amazing festival in the Netherlands at the weekend, which isn’t that far from where I live, but the journey to get to the actual place was like 9 hours, but in total, it was like a 40-minute flight. I feel like the Dutch really know how to put a show together really well.
JH: When I lived in the Netherlands, we went to a festival two hours out of Rotterdam, Pulp was one of the big ones, in a field somewhere. They had some metal, some electronica, all thrown in there. It wasn’t like Lollapalooza, where it was so much of a production, it was “Hey, we have 6 bands, and a small stage, with 3 acts, so live it up”. But there was one that we did that was so bizarre, it was in an old train station.
H: OH SICK!!!!
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JH: They put these metal platforms over the tracks where they had all the wiring, and then up the stairs, to the HUGE stage, and the sound was fantastic. Have you been to that one?
H: I haven’t, but I would love to. I am so into re-purposing places for raves and festivals. I know there is one that happens in the train station in Brussels; I think anything in these spaces is so grand. You’re some place, on topic, that I think every time I go there, JFK, the old TWA building that they turned into a hotel, it kinda looks like the Jetsons, it was the original airport in the 60s. I have spent a lot of time in there in layovers. Every time I’m in there and think, “We could throw a sick party here”.
JH: Yeah, I walk into a church or something and I think of the acoustics, and think “Wow, this would sound great for a concert”. Tell you you’re guilty of that.
H: YEAH, absolutely, in fact, not far from where I live in Hackney, there is a church we looked at using it for a lot of my live show, they throw raves and stuff in there. This is an interesting mix; it’s a progressive church, and part of the policy is that they get offered a certain number of tickets to the main church members, and always in the best interest of everyone. I’ve played some pretty wild spaces. I think a train station would be wicked. Not that I am into digging up the earth for profit, but in Italy, a place called Carrara, a marble quarry, the people who own it are mad ravers. So they throw a yearly festival in this quarry, which was very much out in the open, and they had huge marble bricks; they were massive and stacked, rough-cut marble. The sound was pretty sick.
JH: Well, you’re busy doing that, then the new record, I’ve been listening to it for the last few weeks, I’ve really enjoyed it. But the album is out in October right?
H: October 10th, the album comes out, and a few singles, and then a few little surprises between now and then (watch this film, see below).
JH: I found it to be along the same vein as what you did with Daniel Miller, but it’s a lot dreamier.
H: Yeah, I would say the “Baby We’re Ascending” as an album was about bringing my voice and some other voices into my songwriting, very much about exploring my technical production. Where this one nods to that a bit, but more about storytelling and actual songwriting, which I very much enjoyed, it’s really where the roots of me as an artist are, and a thing to return to. But yeah, “Human Eyes” leans more into what you can do with exploring with voices and choirs.
JH: Well, “Baby We’re Ascending”, some of the visuals I got listening to it were like I was under this great sheet of ice, and I’m watching the beauty of all the water rolling over the top of it, but I’m under this ice. That was one of the visuals I got from that one. Let’s talk about the new record here. I got a friend in Bahrain, she is a music junkie like myself, and they block a lot of that online. I gave her the record (This is in August, the album comes out this week in October), and she LOVES IT. I hope you don’t mind that.
H: AH, I love to hear that, it’s important to me that everyone hears music everywhere in the world, I don’t mind you sharing it.
JH: This is a very interesting album, as so much of it is not really a danceable record.
H: Yeah, it’s not really a “dance” record.
JH: This is what you would hear in the Chill Room at the raves: people sitting in the calming blue lights. But live there with everybody, I bet the lights and visuals would be a beautiful trip to the record.
H: I’m glad that’s how you feel about it. It was definitely made without the intention of the dancefloor there. I mean, the track that’s coming out is dance floor worthy. BUT the album live would be perfect in a train station, with live instruments, live singing, and the rest of it.
JH: So, it took me a while listening to the music cause I downloaded it, I didn’t watch the video at first. Then, when I watched it, the video made the song mean something else. Because I saw each individual person and the lines they were singing. It sort of looked like the way that you were blurring on the visuals, it kinda of looked like that really bad AI we’ve had lately, then I thought AH, that’s the visual feedback you’d be getting when satellite signals look like when you get cross feeds. Then I thought Ok, that’s Jons Hopkins, I didn’t know who IOB Franky was, but then the TRANS VOICES, and I saw them. It was so beautiful.
H: YES!!! You got it. I had been working with the same creative directors across the whole project, and they are so talented, they are fantastic. Because the album itself, the messaging in it, hits on a few different things, but one of them is the ever-changing tech world, and so that’s why a big part of what they’ve been working on has been, whether it’s intentionally to look like AI, or the artwork is to look like surveillance-based. There are so many different things; it was about human connection as well. It was really important the way it was translated by Thomas and Kahal, and I think they’ve really nailed it, and every time they sent over a new visualizer, I get really excited to see what they are making.
JH: So, as you were saying, I was getting those ideas, not even listening to the lyrics, and then you sang, and it was really powerful, like “I know you’re scared, let me wrap my arms around you, hold you near even when I’m not around you”.
H: That’s actually OBI singing; that song is very special to all of us. It came out later, and I know that she will be okay with me saying this, she told me partway through the making of the track, cause I had written the foundations and then I sent her a bit of the loop, and asked “do you think you can write something over the top?” and she sent it back and I put it in an arrangement. And she told me down the line that she had written it about her father, who had passed away when she was younger, and it took on this whole meaning. This was before we brought the whole choir, and when you’re working with someone else’s vocals, there is some extra element of pressure to make something special for them, so when Jon and I were working with Ila on the vocal arrangements and the “Trans Voices,” it felt like everything came together perfectly for the track. I’ve had a lot of beautiful messages from people who appreciate the meaning and how it’s helped them.
JH: Well, tell OBI I’m in love with her voice.
H: I will (laughing), we did a live film for the album, and I thought Wow, she really is amazing, such a talent.
JH: What I got from this was, in the middle of all this shit, do you know New Model Army?
H: Uh hum…
JH: In one of their songs, there was a lyric, “In this golden age of communication, means everyone talks at the same time”, and I felt like your point was that in the middle of all this chaotic thought, and dumping of EVERYTHING, and everyone feeling like they need to make their point, there’s this trans choir offering something beautiful. I thought “YES”, we are here, we the misfits, we the hurt, we the dispossessed, we who are in pain, we love you because we can feel it. That was what I felt from that song. Like EVERY young gay child needs to know this, there is a community, a lot have been hurt, they understand you, and they want to hug you.
H: I’m so happy to hear that. I think of the involvement of so many people, and everyone brought a bit of their life experience into this track. What we’ve heard back from people who it has touched. It got a lot of heavy radio play here. ILĀ, the founder of trans voices, got an email from the father of a trans daughter. He is saying he heard the song on the radio, and he needed to right out say, we’ve all had some difficult times recently, and he said how much it just gave HIM hope for a better life for “THEM”. And I gotta say, when I read this letter, I sent it to people who were instrumental in getting this track made, “THIS IS WHAT IT’S ABOUT!!!”.
JH: Well, reading the letter, you probably felt like you accomplished what you set out to do, right?
H: YES!
JH: I mean, you only got one letter, but how many people did it hit, and hit them where they needed it?
H: Absolutely, now as well as ever, I just think that visibility and us screaming as loud and lovingly as possible, and how it impacts people.
JH: For me, it’s the young people, especially here in Utah, and our high suicide rate for young queer people. So being able to talk to you, yeah, it’s part of the whole reason why I’m doing this. But I love the fact that we can say this, and that I hope that everybody here in Utah gets a listen to this.
H: I would have appreciated it when I was growing up in my little country town, and pushed for better things.
JH: I got this friend Doug Locke, he goes by “Black Travolta.” He is a gay black cowboy. He went to the Beyoncé concert. And my wife went to opening night, and she is sending me pics of all these gay black cowboys. Then Doug went and said, “I feel so seen”. And I was thinking NO, you are just like everybody else there. I was so happy for the guy.
H: It’s mad, isn’t it? Things like this are so important; hopefully, there will be a time when we are just like everyone else.
JH: My hope is that gay pride turns out to be a Frisbee game with a potluck dinner at a park, cause no one cares anymore.
H: Yeah, so we just don’t need it, I hear ya. I think a part of it is to eternally honor the protesters, and the original rioters, that I think that will be if we end up in a perfect world, where equality is really reached.
JH: I thought we had made so much progress, now it’s gone the other way, that’s what is terrifying. So the song HQ, what an opening line, “Hey babe, are you and all the lesbians going to the strip club”, what a line.
H: I LOVE that you brought that up, that is one of my best friends leaving me a voice note, as you can tell.
JH: Was he just being funny?
H: No, it was for a friend’s birthday party, and we WERE going to a strip club, he’s queer, and he got wind of it. I was hungover and working on the track, and he sent me these voice notes, and I jokingly put them in there, something about the arrangement and how emotional it was made this jerky voice note sound kind of perfect. It’s funny, he’s going to love hearing this, knowing his voice note made my album.
THIS performance is something to set your soul free.
JH: There were monologues that were all kind of disconnected, the line “Our Love Grew Stronger, HQ was the only place I knew”. Was HQ a club?
H: HQ is the base, a friend’s house for a circle of friends, mostly queer; it’s our little safe space. The thing with that song, I think, after the album, what it’s about, technology, being queer, still being completely human, the trans voices like to give a big hug. HQ was a good bookend for the album.
JH: SO, final question, I asked you last time, but I will ask again, what would your message be to the young queer person who is afraid?
H: I would say to anyone who is out, or maybe not able to come out, that I love you, and we’ve always got the space to welcome you, be kind to yourselves.
HAAi information and links
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The audio of this interview, tangents of mutual friends, and concert venues…
