HUMANiSE

“I didn’t set out for this record to have my voice front and centre,” Teneil Throssell tells Apple Music. “It just naturally flowed like that and has now become more personal than anything I’ve done before.” As DJ and producer HAAi, Throssell has spent the last decade creating joyous dance-floor moments. Through residencies at London’s Phonox club, her first EP Systems Up, Windows Down (2019) and 2022’s debut album Baby, We’re Ascending, Throssell has made her signature an infectious blend of gut-shaking bass with soaring vocal melody. On her latest album, HUMANiSE, Throssell combines her knack for dance-floor communion with a playful look into the ways digital personas can interact with human creativity. The result is 12 enveloping tracks that merge chopped, digitised vocals with Throssell’s own voice and sweeping synth melody, traversing the choral ambience of “Satellite” to the dark, trap-bass and rap verses of “Shapeshift”, fast-paced club kicks of “Hey!” and the trance bliss of “New Euphoria”. “It’s been such a joyous process to write in this way and to be so vulnerable,” Throssell says. “I’m so proud of this record and the humanity it represents.” Read on for Throssell’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “Satellite (Intro)”, “Satellite” (with Jon Hopkins, Obi Franky, ILĀ and Trans Voices) “This track was one of the earliest I wrote for the album, and it came together in many ways with many people. It started with some chopped vocals from a session I did with a gospel choir for my last album and that created the foundations. Then, I wrote a melody and reached out to Obi Franky to sing the lead line, and she did such a beautiful job. Finally, I sent the track to Jon Hopkins because I knew it was up his alley, and we then brought in ILĀ and Trans Voices. It transformed so much from the early demo to what it is now. My friendship with Jon is very silly and, while we were working on this, we were sharing a meme about bin collections in the UK and kept on sending each other the phrase ‘when bins’ over voice note. He ended up putting it in the track as a joke, and I kept it in the final version as an homage to our relationship!” “All That Falls Apart” (feat. James Massiah), “Comes Together” “I’d written this track with the intention of having James Massiah on it, as I knew he would be perfect to convey the theme of the record being about human experience. Thankfully, he was up for it, and what he wrote was exactly what I had envisioned. I want the track to feel like you’re being opened up to the world of the record by starting with field recordings of Oxford Circus and then choral vocals and James’ words.” “Stitches” “‘Stitches’ is a naive love letter to yourself, your lover and your best friends. It’s the most lyrical thing I’ve ever written, and it came about after I’d finished the album and handed it over to the label. I felt like it was still missing one or two extra songs though, so I started playing around in the studio with my collaborator Pat Alvarez and this melody just flowed out, and we wrote it together in a day. It was my first time writing like that and I loved it. It’s lyrically more vulnerable and less overthought, allowing my voice to be at the centre.” “Can’t Stand to Lose” “This was one of the earlier tunes I had written, before I had realised the full scope of the album. My background is playing in bands, but since DJing and producing, I haven’t really written in a songwriting, verse-chorus type of way for a long time. On ‘Can’t Stand to Lose’, I really enjoyed leaning back into my songwriting skills and reconnecting with that part of my creativity.” “Shapeshift” (with KAM-BU) “With this track, I wanted to write something that had a vulnerability to its start and that would then switch into something entirely different with harsh low-end frequencies and hard sounds. The challenge was to make both those elements work within one six-minute tune and a huge part of the solution was collaborating with KAM-BU, who is so talented and rides that change perfectly into a much more gritty and darker place.” “Voices” “‘Voices’ was another track that I wrote after the album was finished, and it came from a loop that Pat Alvarez had sent me. I initially planned on making something really weird with it, but when we were in the studio together, Pat played these chords and it started to come together really easily. It’s been such a pleasure to make music on this record that doesn’t feel like you’re pulling your hair out during the process—instead it’s been so joyful.” “Go (Intro)” (with Kaiden Ford), “Go” “This one has had so many different lives, but I wrote the lyrics about growing up in a very small town and realising your queerness and working out how to handle it. It’s something I think anyone else who has been othered can relate to. I love the moodiness the song has and the drive to its beat. It’s one of my favourite tracks on the album, and it’s always really fun to play live.” “HUMANiSE” “While I was writing this song, the entire theme of the album came together. I was messing around with production plugins with Jon Hopkins and saw there was a dial on one labelled ‘humanise’, which would try and make a digital vocal sound more human. That prompted a whole discussion about the nature of human identity and creativity, and I realised it would be a great title for a record. In terms of the sounds on the track, I wanted to lean into the weirder side of my production skills by using different frequencies and beats, along with the human side, which is represented by singing.” “Hey! (Intro)”, “Hey!” “I was playing around with clubbier stuff and ended up writing this track, but when it came to finishing the album, I almost took it off the tracklist as there’s nothing else like it on the record. Still, the more I listened to it, the more I realisedit made sense for HUMANiSE since it has processing running through the vocals, and I really do like how it sounds. I also recently made a new edit of it that I’m really enjoying.” “Rushing (Intro)”, “Rushing” (with ILĀ and Trans Voices) “‘Rushing’ sits in a similar world to ‘Go’ and the lyrics similarly reference my past and my parents. It just ended up being personal while I was writing it, and it feels like the first time I’ve really looked into my past through songwriting. That self-reflection brings out the human side of the album. I still get emotional listening to it now, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this honest on a track before.” “New Euphoria” (with Alexis Taylor, ILĀ and Trans Voices) “I worked with Alexis Taylor on my last album and had planned on making more music together ever since. I knew I wanted us to sing together and to make something dancier. It’s written as a call and response between myself as a human speaking to my robot friend, Alexis, whose vocals we’ve processed, and it’s an aching love being expressed between these two existences. Trans Voices then stitched it all together before it explodes into a bassy, overdriven sound, which is the kind of music I want myself and Alexis to make more of. He’s such a pleasure to work with.” “HQ” (with Kaiden Ford) “After all the drama of the rest of the record, I wanted to bring it back down and to send people off with a bit of a hug. HQ is what I call one of my closest friend’s homes, which lots of us spend time in, and the song is about the feeling of care we have for each other and wanting others to have it too. It has snippets of voice notes from friends to each other which is really nice since you can hear the love in everyone’s voice. Kaiden Ford is part of that friendship group and their spoken-word piece sums it up perfectly.”