Artist of the Month: HAAi

When I point out to HAAi that the final two letters of her artist moniker are “AI,” she is humorously taken aback. The multidisciplinary artist, whose real name is Teneil Laetitia Throssell, had never noticed it before, despite the fact that her latest album, HUMANiSE, is a vociferous statement in support of preserving human creativity.

“The joy and the rush that you get from creating is one of the greatest feelings you can have,” Teneil tells me. “I’m sure there are ways you can get inspired by [artificial intelligence], but when creating, there’s no better feeling than having a breakthrough on something: a sound, a VST, a plugin. Feeling like you fucking nailed it is one of the joys of making music.”

Teneil didn’t use any AI programs when making the record, which is a collection of diverse electronic music sonically channeling the full range of human emotions. Seething, hazy love songs like “Comes Together” fit in between dance compositions like “Voices” that fluctuate from celebratory light to raw, unfiltered dark.

“With artists, the thing that you really connect with is their stories and their experiences in the music. Whether it’s lyrical or not, there’s emotion that can’t be manufactured,” Teneil explains. To her, this is a battle between what’s real and what isn’t. “The future of music is going to be more about human connection because of the interference of this stuff that’s not real.”

Teneil fostered human connection on the album through Intimate collaboration. Rather than stacking names to stretch her fanbase, she brought in close friends, such as electronic master Jon Hopkins. When she wasn’t singing, she worked with a small group of vocalists, including Trans Voices and Kaiden Ford. Pat Alvarez, who is known for his productions with The Blessed Madonna, Adiel, and Kyle Watson, among many others, was her right-hand man through the whole process. 

Teneil was tentative about bringing on a male producer at first. She wanted to avoid the banal criticism that he did all the work, and she was just on the album cover (a line of commentary that is as tragically frequent as it is unfounded and ridiculous). But she looks back with immense fondness on creating with Alvarez.

“He is such a trusted person to work with. He is so talented. I learned so much from him,” Teneil says, going on to mention that she and Alvarez have an upcoming release that will share their names out front, giving as much credit as possible to all the artists involved.

I actually first met Teneil because of this same intention. I was writing a separate piece involving “the floor,” her recent remix for Fred Again.., and her second contribution to USB (she is one of the only artists to have two credits on the ongoing release). She insisted on doing a Zoom call instead of an email survey so she could go into all the different versions she made with different producers before the final.

For this current feature, I was lucky that I could sit with her in Los Angeles the day after she DJ’d for seven hours for the underground promoter, Into The Woods. 

It was a long saga before Teneil arrived at that set. Her flight itinerary leading up to it sent her from New York City, back to Lyon to play main stage at Nuits Sonores, then to Las Vegas to play EDC, where she was detained at the airport for hours (by a Customs agent who seemed quite bitter that she had a fun job). She made her festival slot, but had to fly out of Vegas early the next day, and when she arrived at her hotel in LA, she couldn’t check in until 3 PM, which is exactly when her set was supposed to begin.

After all that, she made it to see a massive queue of people outside ready to dance, many of whom she wished goodbye to after the last beat dropped. As it turned out, the strenuous travel ended up serving the set.

“If I walk into a show and I feel really well slept, sometimes there can be an anxious energy to get everything right. If I am feeling quite tired, it removes that veil of overthinking. I slot into the vibe,” Teneil says. While she doesn’t recommend the complex routing (or getting detained at Customs), it all played into her core intention as a DJ:

“DJing is the main act of service. It’s a transferable skill from when I worked on bars and before that when I was a hairdresser. The ultimate goal is to have people leave that experience feeling better. Whether it’s giving someone a good haircut or making someone the best drink. You want them to feel happy,” Teneil says. “Now for me, that is playing music and wanting people to feel the same kind of thing that I feel about it.”

Just as she prioritizes human engagement in her creative process, she wants to mirror that for the crowd. With seven hours, she was able to really plug in and take them on an encompassing journey through various genres. She’s also currently working on a project that will morph tracks from the  HUMANiSE era into club-focused versions, and when she played those during this long set, she knew the audience was aware.

“It’s maybe a bit of a weird personal thing, but I always felt it was quite indulgent to play my own music,” Teneil admits. “But it was a really beautiful moment. People were so engaged.”

Interestingly, when she performs her HUMANiSE live sets with live vocals and a flurry of flashing synthesizers, those consist entirely of her own music. In that scenario, she wants to remove the barrier between the stage and the audience as much as she can, inviting them into her indulgent universe.

“They’re stepping into a world that is by design,” Teneil says. She’s even had the opportunity to host these performances in venues where electronic music is far from common. She opened for Max Cooper at Royal Albert Hall, and she’ll be bringing her live concept to Café Berlin in Madrid in September, alongside some other soon-to-be-announced projects. “It’s taking this kind of music into spaces it’s not designed entirely for, but it makes sense in. That’s creating a really unique experience for the crowd and for myself. Anyone who gets the opportunity to be part of it with me, I want them to remember it as much as I do.”

Every one of these memories is a potential inspiration for what’s coming next from the HAAi project, whether it’s a new release, an expanded live concept, or the next track in a DJ set. And memories are one thing AI will never have.

Listen to HAAi's 'Artist of the Month' chart below: