LONDON-based Teneil Throssell, who records for Mute as HAAi, has certainly undertaken a deep geographical and musical journey to where she is today: poised to release her second EP for Mute, one full of future techno experimentation.
Born in Western Australia, she was a teen guitarist who moved uptown to Sydney for a dive into that city’s punk scene.
From there she sprang to London and the founding of a psych rock band, Dark Bells, who rose to the British festival circuit; after they split, she had an electronic music epiphany on the dancefloors of Berlin.
When she returned to London she was soon DJing a weekly all-nighter at Phonox in Brixton, pushing out into Turkish funk, Africana, and Middle Eastern grooves.
Mute came knocking in 2019 and she released a six-tracker, Systems Up, Windows Down, on neon orange vinyl this February.
And now she’s released the video to accompany “Rotating In Unison”, which she also made herself and which is culled from her forthcoming second EP for Mute, Put Your Head Above The Parakeets, out on September 18th.
The video is a montage cut-up of grainy footage, looking at the future dystopia we find ourselves suddenly living in. Smiley flags fly resplendent; facemasks and social distancing warning flicker in and out with foliage.
Teneil explained: “The track and the visual were both made to highlight beauty and coexistence as we all rotate around the sun; to try and remember beauty and calm in a time of uncertainty and unrest, even for just a few minutes.”
The track itself really shows her journey: there’s stuttering glitchtronica, akin to ~Scape artists like Jan Jelinek and the deep dub of Pole; there’s wide psychedelic space and offworld pulsing, resolving into a blissful keyboard figure. “Check”, the solitary vocal hook, drops in and out metronomically. That’s where we’re at you know: we check, check our distancing, ourselves, our friends, our mental health.
It’s the perfect music for the future-now.
HAAi’s Put Your Head Above The Parakeets will be released by Mute on September 18th on digital and limited green vinyl formats. You can secure your copy at Mutebank, here.
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