HAAi – Systems Up, Windows Down (Mute)

DJ and producer HAAi’s dancefloor lethal, industrialised machine music debut for Mute gets a very welcome release on 12″

Systems Up, Windows Down appeared across digital platforms late last year and only now enters the physical realm in 12” format. The London-based, Australian-born DJ and producer hits the sweet spot somewhere between Factory Floor and Djax-Up-Beats on this essential electronic record. HAAi’s aesthetic here feels fully forged yet still exploratory, and I can only imagine what she’ll come up with given the scope to explore her sonic universe across a long(er) player. Systems Up, Windows Down is, after all, aimed primarily at dancefloors and is a confident collection of pleasure after pleasure.

“Don’t Flatter Yourself Love” starts off with metallic drones beamed in from a bleak futurescape. Lived-in electronic washes and the throttle of a motorbike weave around and morph with a deadly acid squelch. It even hints at digital hardcore whilst igniting the dancefloor. HAAi cuts in and out of the toughest of grooves throughout the track’s course, making it an irresistible air puncher and body mover. In contrast, “Stop Looking at Me Swan” pulls back the veil on a version of our world that is just out of reach, with spectral breakbeats firing off into the void. It may not go that gently into the night, but it is the least confrontational cut here.

Not that these confrontations are in any way unwelcome. Quite the contrary, with “6666” a case in point. It is all about the bass, with a low end strategy that will reconfigure the most reluctant of bodies. When the knock-on-wood percussion emerges in the mix it becomes impossible not to move, not to be moved. An encounter of the first kind with “CHONKIBOI” and it seems as if this might be an angular, organic techno number. But it thrillingly pulls in Afrobeat influences and also becomes a slice of dynamite outernational house music. “It’s Something We Can All Learn From” keeps something of that content, but presents it in more stripped down fashion, an almost brittle exercise in experimental percussive house.

At just shy of ten minutes, “Systems Up, Windows Down” is a startling thing of many-tentacled beauty. A cage-rattling, pneumatic four to the floor stomp that remains unremitting rather than punishing. Off world alarms ignite the background as this destroyer of worlds descends. Details emerge from the heavy atmosphere – sequenced bleeps that grow into a synthetic bath to allow the 4/4 to dissipate for a spell. Synths pulse and rise alongside snippets of dead radio voice – spliced by collapsing dimensional walls – before HAAi breaks matters out into the open. This is heady and heavy machine music suitable for rave caves and industrial spaces the world over.