Truancy Volume 136: Happa

For producers, it must be fairly difficult to look back at your early productions or debut release and be able to have a critical stance on them, especially in contrast to where you’ve possibly come from since then. In a small chat with this week’s Truancy Volume mixer, Happa, he is comfortable in admitting his early productions were just something he needed to get out of his system as an angsty teenager. “I went through an industrial techno phase where I was just trying to make the hardest song ever.” he describes. In an interview with XLR8R he’s also quick to mention that if it wasn’t for great management holding him back in the most crucial way then he would have surely taken every offer from every label that got in touch at the time. This has culminated in a modest discography that’s seen Happa slowly explore multiple avenues with his productions, as well as collaborative efforts with Manni Dee under the alias Habits of Hate. Slowing things down after his Boomkat Editions release in 2013, Happa happily mentions he feels he’s reached a place where he’s settled and finally ready to share and release new music.

This has recently taken form as an ongoing 3 part series on his label PT/5 that he runs with his manager Dan Foat. A clear fan of rave culture Happa tells us that PT/5 is named after Part V of the Criminal Justice Act of ’94, which gave police the power to shutdown illegal raves defined as a “gathering on land in the open air of 100 or more persons (whether or not trespassers) at which amplified music is played during the night”. The Act singled out “music (that) includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. Some of the forthcoming material is a couple of years old, some brand new, some that’s been floating around for a bit that you might have heard at the end of his sets or played by James Blake on his 1-800 Dinosaur radio show.

When questioned about forthcoming music and his productions he stresses that “I’m not scared about releasing music that no one will like but I like the idea of having characters like Quasimoto – I don’t want to be just a techno producer. I want to do more. Working with other musicians is such an important thing for me and it’s so exciting – I’d love to make some weird grime as well. Imagine Danny Weed meets Onoehtrix Point Never type stuff. I love Arca and Jesse’s visual work as well as artists such as Grouper – she’s one of my favourite musicians.” With all this in mind one of the most exciting bits of news surrounding Happa, is the production credit on FKA Twigs’ M3LL155X for one of the standout tracks of the release, ‘In Time’. It’s a wonderful opportunity which we’re hoping he explores further in 2016.

Clocking in at just under an hour, Truancy Volume 136 is a perfect insight into Happa and his possible directions for 2016. Here’s what he had to say on the mix. “I actually borrowed one of my mates USB controllers to record it, as I wanted to show off a few unreleased bombs, and I only have Technics at home. Bit easier to mix with too. So yeah, as I said there are some new bits in there from the lovely Chevel, Metrist, Bruce and more. I also wanted to showcase a few of my current favourites in the stranger corners of the dance music world, like M.E.S.H and Prostitutes. Then to round it off, I included a few bangers here and there.”