HAAi Finds Her Own Frequency on DIGITiSE

Arriving October 9 via Mute, the album brings a restless sense of rhythm and an unmistakable sonic identity to an expansive vision of club music.

HAAi, whose new album DIGITiSE arrives October 9 via Mute. Photography: Lamia Karic.

There are moments on HAAi’s DIGITiSE when the beat disappears and the track becomes even more absorbing. A voice hangs in the space it leaves behind. A mechanical beep comes into focus. A synth figure continues moving, quietly preparing the ground for the rhythm’s return. Across the album, these passages become some of its most compelling features. HAAi understands how much anticipation can live inside a brief interruption.

That attention to movement holds together a record with considerable range. Progressive melodies, garage-inflected percussion, industrial textures, and heavy bass all find their place here. Through those shifts, HAAi maintains a distinct identity: fragmented vocals, curious electronic sounds, and arrangements that continually give the listener something new to follow.

Before exploring its darker corners, though, DIGITiSE opens with an invitation.

“RE-HUMANiSE” takes its time introducing the dance floor. For much of its opening stretch, a beautiful, exploratory synth accompanies a voice reflecting on dignity, identity, and connection. The words offer recognition to people who have been reduced to labels or pushed toward silence. As the focus turns toward being together on the dance floor, a muffled beat begins to emerge, eventually opening into the full arrangement.

It is an affecting introduction. The gradual build gives the voice room to register, while the music lends its message a warmth that carries into the rest of the record. Even as the album moves toward harsher textures, that opening sense of welcome remains a meaningful point of reference.

“Printerlude” quickly introduces another side of HAAi’s world. Office-like chatter, telephone tones, and printer sounds become material for a gritty, industrial construction. The rhythm repeatedly breaks open, offering brief glimpses of the activity beneath it before picking up again. A telephone message near the end completes the scene, and the abrupt transition onward feels entirely at home in a track built around interruption.

These mechanical details help give DIGITiSE its character. They also serve a compositional purpose: marking transitions, gathering tension, and creating rhythmic interest beyond the kick drum.

“HAAi understands how much anticipation can live inside a brief interruption.”

The title track offers the clearest example of how precisely HAAi can place those details. A fragmented vocal runs through the arrangement, resolving into “I can” immediately before its two drops. That small recurring gesture connects the track’s sections, giving each arrival a familiar cue.

Between them, a conversational breakdown makes room for the surrounding atmosphere. A syncopated plucked synth returns, gradually drawing the track back into motion. When the second drop arrives, its relative simplicity is part of the appeal. It comes a little sooner than expected, with enough space for the rhythm to make its impression. The excitement lies in the preparation, the placement, and the satisfying economy of the return.

“I Wanna Feel Like Someone,” featuring James Massiah, applies a related approach to a more insistent club framework. Driving repetition, a buzzing electronic figure, and recurring high tones give it a dark warehouse feel. Vocal fragments accumulate around phrases that emerge more fully at key moments, another thread connecting it to the title track.

Here, the second build takes longer. Elements gather, a glitching texture joins the arrangement, and a sustained high tone later rises toward a short break before abruptly cutting away. The groove returns with renewed force. Even the beatless passages retain a sense of motion through the sounds left circulating inside them.

Alongside the dark, industrial drive of “THANK U,” it provides one of the album’s strongest connections to techno. Repetition gives these tracks their physical pull; small changes within and around that repetition keep them engaging.

Elsewhere, HAAi allows the palette to expand. “Depth Perception” pushes toward heavier, more disorienting bass territory. “Ignition,” featuring Echonomist, gives shimmering synths and layered voices a deeper emotional presence. Its recurring vocal phrases and spacious breakdown develop a sense of longing without overwhelming its club momentum. These tracks occupy different spaces, yet their handling of texture and progression makes them feel closely related.

The closing “Talking Walls” gives that breadth its fullest expression. A weighty opening develops into an extended, increasingly luminous passage where the arrangement has room to breathe. Voices enter, the music rebuilds, and the final section opens into an uplifting interplay of synths and melody. A rough-edged high synth eventually comes forward before the track recedes into a shimmering finish.

It is a fitting answer to “RE-HUMANiSE.” The opening welcomes the listener into a shared space; the closing leaves that space feeling larger.

What stays with us about DIGITiSE is the care connecting its many directions. HAAi gives each track its own movement and atmosphere while preserving a recognizable musical personality throughout. The album rewards attention to its smallest gestures: a voice becoming clear, a tone growing louder, a beat disappearing for just long enough. Those details make its dance floors feel distinctly hers.

DIGITiSE arrives October 9 via Mute.