DJ HARAM - Beside Myself
The first single from Beside Myself is a declaration of intent. Voyeur has tough clanging drums and sour violin, it takes no prisoners. Haram describes it as 'the voices in my head screaming wordlessly. While I’m at the center of a mosh pit. On research chemicals. Someone is like — You’re gonna make it boo, promise, just wait it out — but the future doesn’t exist in this mind state, so does that really matter." You Ready?
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DJ Haram's debut album Beside Myself is testament to the survival of the spirit as an artist reckoning with the present global hellscape. A reference for rage/grief and also the alienation of feeling out of step with the world, the album title functions as a double entendre. With a decade spanning career, the “multidisciplinary propagandist” insists on evolving in times of war and weaponized entertainment, challenging herself and her peers, she asks - “how can this be, how can we live with ourselves, how can we find each other and the truth, how can we get free?” The answer is never so explicit but the out-loud musing places her firmly “beside herself”, travelling a “lonely road”, building her space, sharpening her technical production and lyricism to new focus and intention.
On Beside Myself she is joined by a swarm of collaborators, finding her ‘lonely road’ full of peers, collectively navigating pain and purpose, and in occasional moments of joyful respite, mocking the strife. Haram describes herself as a “god fearing atheist” who makes “anti-format audio propaganda/anti-lifestyle immersive sonics”. Her music attests to this, as she brings in friends and collaborators some of whom she’s previously produced with, from MC's Armand Hammer (billy woods + ELUCID), Bbymutha, SHA RAY, her 700 Bliss partner Moor Mother, Dakn, through to co-producers like Underground rap god August Fanon, Egyptian producer El Kontessa, Jersey Club producer Kay Drizz, musicians like trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, and guitarist Abdul Hakim Bilal.
It's immediately identifiable as her work, but simultaneously unclassifiable; a syncretic ensemble built on middle eastern music, that finds equal space in its tormented live production for Jersey Club, punk, noise, electro-acoustic instrumentation and sampling, tambourines, shakers, darbuka drums and violin, matched with trancelike rave synths, walls of 808's and lurking, rumbling bass. Often at the centre is her own performance of unflinching, heartbroken poetic verse, in conversation with inspiring thinkers like Audre Lorde or Nawal El Saadawi (who’s words are featured on the album) and Kim Gordon in context, examining the material and the abstract in equal measure.
For Haram collaboration is integral, describing it as collective power. She says “we have to start organizing outside the frame. Music is a liberation technology, a vessel of truth and resistance” and on Beside Myself, she makes the connection between collaborative musical creativity as “a small vulnerable shelter amidst a worsening storm”, one that can still “realize a musical experience that doesn't exist yet, that gives sound to things thus far only felt, however strongly”.
And yet, as she jokes sardonically "somehow I recorded this in the opposite-world, where corporate brand deals are yaasified and celebrated, cuz someone got the bag, while dissent, radical and explicitly political art “aren’t cool.” "This album is the antithesis to ‘joy is resistance’. I make the music that I need. No music has healed me yet. No music has healed the earth. No music inherently subverts fetishization." Beside Myself has a grungy pessimistic futurism that offers no easy resolutions. As the title suggests, there are frictions at the heart of this album, inner and outer. Yet the catharsis and drama it produces is rarely so defiantly delivered.
Biography
DJ Haram is an electronic music producer, multi-disciplinary propagandist, and self described anti-format DJ, originally from New Jersey currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Stylistically versatile, Haram is known for her eclectic production and djing – experimental bass and club music; analogue synths and percussion; abrasive, noise adjacent rap collaborations; weaving in Middle Eastern instrumentation and samples.
She also makes up half of ‘700 Bliss,’ a hip hop/noise project with Moor Mother; the two released the critically acclaimed ‘Nothing to Declare’ in 2022. DJ Haram currently runs ‘Monday Night Raw’ monthly at Brooklyn staple the Lot Radio, curating open format DJ b2bs and live rap and experimental performances. She previously held a 5 year residence at Rinse FM London with ‘Rage Radio’. She’s also released a number of collaborations and remixes, notably with Billy Woods, Armand Hammer ft. Pink Siifu, Ghias Guevara, Debby Friday, and Fever Ray.
.Haram started using her voice on her ’Nothing to Declare’ productions but her most recent EP, ‘Handplay,’ finds her in new intimate form, sharing herself as a “lover, daughter, and comrade.” Her forthcoming album "Beside Myself” is due on Hyperdub in July 2025. On it, her voice sits at the centre of the album, while she collaborates with friends — rappers, co-producers, solo instrumentalists — putting into word and sound what she calls “survival of the spirit.”
Internationally, she has played on noteworthy stages like Dekmantel, Unsound, Roskilde, Le Guess Who, Pitchfork Festival, Tashweesh, Bonnaroo and has toured from Tokyo to Istanbul. Additionally, DJ Haram has released 4 solo EPs including Grace (Hyperdub, 2019) and the self-released Mixed Berries (2019) and Era (2021).