Purple Jelly Disc

The title is a clue: something wobbly, translucent, slightly wrong in the best possible way. HAAi builds this track around a central acid line that warps and slides with the queasy elasticity of something not quite solid — it bends at the edges, resists resolution, loops back on itself with the logic of a fever dream. The production sits in a distinctly psychedelic lineage that runs from early Chicago house through the more surreal corners of nineties British rave, and there is genuine strangeness here, a refusal to be entirely comfortable or clean. Underneath the weirdness, though, the groove is locked and physical — a four-on-the-floor kick that gives the body something to hold onto while the mind wanders. Colors feel like the right metaphor: this is purple and translucent and slightly iridescent, catching light differently depending on the angle. There is humor buried in the construction too, a lightness that prevents the psychedelia from curdling into pretension. HAAi's skill as a DJ is audible in how she understands functional music — this is a record designed to do something specific to a room, to shift the energy sideways rather than forward, to introduce a welcome disorientation. Play it when the night needs to get weird, when the predictable trajectory of a playlist wants breaking.