DJ Haram – Beside Myself
It’s hard to forget a DJ Haram production once you’ve heard it. The Brooklyn producer’s name is synonymous with harsh, heavy impact sounds, throttling intensity and beats that break through brick walls. Her 2019 EP Grace offered an early glimpse of her signature aesthetic, pairing Middle Eastern samples and instrumentation with siren-like frequencies and ominous menace. She’s delivered eerie sound beds in collaboration with Moor Mother on 700 Bliss, and offered an apt application of punishing noise clang as the backdrop for Armand Hammer’s “Trauma Mic.” Even when remixing others, she has a tendency to paint everything a few shades darker, whether via the minimalist industrial techno thump on her rework of Fever Ray’s “Carbon Dioxide,” or overheating vocal layers on Special Interest’s “Street Pulse Beat.”
Haram’s debut full-length, Beside Myself, provides a similarly indelible mark on one’s memory, steeped in ominous frequencies and beats as harsh and as heavy as the burning hellscape outside. As much a widescreen extension of the ideas she first explored on Grace as well as a summary of sorts of the terrain she’s covered since, Beside Myself is both a defiant showcase for her signature apocalyptic club music as well as for the various forms of sorcery she’s capable of conjuring in the company of collaborators, forming and nurturing a community even in the face of an increasingly unforgiving world.
Beside Myself comes to life slowly but terrifyingly, with the sounds of what can only be described as robotic torture devices piercing the synth-laden Blade Runner ambience of leadoff track “Walking Memory,” while Aquiles Navarro’s trumpet provides a somber backdrop for DJ Haram’s warning, “You can’t afford this madness,” on the subsequent “Remaining.” But with the eruption of “Fishnets,” featuring explosive verses from the likes of Bbymutha and Sha Ray, Beside Myself transforms from chilling to bombastic, less paralyzed with terror than driven to return the favor.
From the moment that DJ Haram says, “I see god, I can’t stand him” on “Lifelike,” a Moor Mother collaboration that would fit in easily among their other tracks as 700 Bliss, Beside Myself transforms from smoke-filled sky to a mine-streaked landscape. And the harder it goes, the more exciting it is, whether via the frantic drumwork of “Voyeur,” the chop-ups of Armand Hammer’s guest raps on “Stenography,” or the blend of tabla and heavy metal guitar on the ferocious “IDGAF.”
The most meditative moment on Beside Myself is also its most mournful, the gently grief-stricken “Who Needs Enemies When These Are Your Allies,” ending with a necessary splash of cold water from DJ Archangel: “Girl, that billionaire does not know you and is not your oomf, stand the fuck up.” But whether moving at incalculable BPMs on “Sahel” or turning to vapor like rain on a summer city street on “Distress Tolerance,” Beside Myself is meant to move you. Physically, emotionally—anything other than passively shrugging as the flames burn even hotter.
Label: Hyperdub
Year: 2025
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