Haai reflects on the best tracks of The Warehouse Project

London-based, Australian-born Teneil Throssell, aka HAAi, rarely comes back home. Outside of the COVID-19 pandemic, she’s in high demand overseas, playing incredible shows on a regular basis.

Recent appearances at EDC Las Vegas and Rainbow Disco Club, as well as an upcoming appearance at Love International and so many more are just a small taste of her busy schedule.

This last month saw her headlining the Australian debut of The Warehouse Project, the iconic Manchester brand’s first ever foray outside its own shores. With multiple sellouts across four shows in both Eora/Sydney and Naarm/Melbourne over just one weekend, it was a large debut to say the least.

We caught up with HAAi fresh off the back of these shows, and in between her very busy schedule, to chat about what makes a warehouse so special, and how she likes to soundtrack it.

Q: WHAT EXCITES YOU MOST ABOUT PLAYING WAREHOUSES?

HAAi: It just encapsulates the spirit of the rave more, I think. I mean, I think there's definitely something to be said for a sweaty club, but I just think that like what you can do with production, and a kind of looseness with a crowd in a warehouse is so different.

The Warehouse Project in particular, I've played for them for years in Manchester. It was really fun to do one abroad, especially back home. To be honest, I was really curious about how the original Manchester production was going to translate.

You know, I think they really smashed it.

Q: WHAT SETS THEM APART FROM PLAYING OTHER KINDS OF GIGS DO YOU THINK?

HAAi: That’s a tough one to answer because the warehouse on its own is really just a shell, like an empty shell. It’s the production that you bring into it that sets it apart. Melbourne and Sydney have some amazing, big warehouses. The production is always completely different, depending on who's promoting the show.

Because it's such a blank canvas to work with, they really lend themselves to going as far as you want with production stuff. They managed to get it to get both of them sounding like really, really good, which Oh, yeah. Which can be quite difficult to achieve in a space like that. So it was pretty impressive.

Q: WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONGS YOU PLAYED THROUGHOUT THIS MOST RECENT TRIP HOME?

HAAi: Definitely the latest Skrillex one. He sent it to me a couple of weeks ago.

He sent me like a couple different versions of it, which Sonny (Skrillex) often does with stuff that he's like working on and he'll like, make like the tiniest little tweak. He's got such an ear for mixing.

That one I actually opened my set with it in Melbourne. The crowd was so electric, and thought that, playing before Bonobo, that it made sense to kind of go in a little bit, guns blazing.

Eventually I wound things back for him, because I knew that he would want to start with some of his more gentle tracks. I didn’t want to leave him with the place on fire.

Q: YOU PLAYED A RADIOHEAD EDIT OF “EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE’. CAN YOU RUN ME THROUGH THE DECISION TO PLAY A TRACK LIKE THAT IN SUCH A MASSIVE SPACE?

HAAi: It just kind of happens to be honest, I don’t tend to plan my sets.

In saying that, I've played quite a lot of warehouse parties that have very varied and large audiences in general. So I think for me, I really love the sort of surprise element of these kinds of moments.

Sometimes, you know, I'll be playing and it's really dependent on like, how excitable the crowd are, and how much you can throw a little curveball or play a little nostalgic banger or something. It’s one of those things that you just can't predict.

I mean, case in point, with the Radiohead one I just sort of heard the melody in my head as I was playing another tune, and rather than mapping these things out too much, both for myself and for the audience, I think it’s exciting if there’s a high percentage of spontaneity.

Q: I HEARD YOU’VE ALSO BEEN DEBUTING A COLLABORATION WITH US PRODUCER HUDSON MOHAWKE. WHAT’S THE BACKSTORY BEHIND THAT?

HAAi: I was in LA for a show and I've known Ross for a while and have been very fond of his productions. I just reached out to him and asked “would you want to try getting in the studio?” So I went around to his studio in LA and this is what came out of it.

It’s quite a euphoric trancey banger that turns into a really heavy bass-driven track. I've been playing it out for like, a good couple of months and it does the damage I think.

It’s nice to be adding some touches to it and to be able to road test things along the way. It doesn’t even have a title yet.

Q: THIS TRIP BACK HOME TO AUSTRALIA HAS BEEN SHORT. WHAT DO YOU HOPE FOR AUSTRALIA’S LOCAL SCENES, SEEING THEM BLOSSOM FROM SO FAR AWAY?

HAAi: A great question. To be honest, I mean, first and foremost, I would just love to see the music scene stabilise.

To be fair, that’s at home and globally as well. Ever since the pandemic, one of the huge things has been that people are so uncertain. Things came back and then we cancelled them, and then came back and were cancelled again. I feel like it created a real uncertainty of whether people's tickets were going to be valid and changed the landscape of how people like to buy tickets in the first place.

That’s obviously had a huge knock on effect with festivals and then supply chains and all the rest of it. It's certainly not an issue that's exclusive to Australia. Something that I think that we'd all love to see is a real focus back on community-based events. It’s the real bread and butter of the scene, of any scene around the world really.

In Australia we have some of the strongest attendance in smaller clubs, and that has a knock on effect to bigger events. I really love doing side shows when I come back home because you get to scratch the itch of being in all these incredible small venues that we have here.

I think that will be the foundation to getting things back on track.

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Pre-registration for future events by The Warehouse Project have opened and are accessible here.

Jack Colquhoun is the Managing Editor for Mixmag Australia, follow him on Instagram.