Haunted is a series dedicated to the handful of bands that’ve dominated my headphones for the last three or four years and whose names coincidentally all start with H. Am I obsessed with them or are they obsessed with me?
There isn’t much online about Hayien. I don’t know if Hayien is a he/she/they or it. I don’t know if Hayien is American or German or both. All I know is that Hayien has/have been putting out tracks on the reg for the last three years with no breaks, and not a single one of these tracks has been anything less than shoegaze perfection.
It’s absurd. We spend years looking for music that tickles our need for novelty, while remaining cozy and familiar. We want our bands to sound like Slowdive, but we don’t want them to rip off Slowdive. We want them to evolve but to always stay the same. We want them to never quit and be perfect forever.
It sounds impossible, but there have been contenders. I’ve never seen Whirr fail but I did see them quit. Teenage Wrist are also nearly flawless, but there are, like, two songs in their entire discography that I skip. I had high hopes back in the day from APTBS and APOF, but they lost me at their last albums (I really tried, I swear).
And now there’s Hayien.
You’re going to tell me I’m exaggerating, but I’m convinced I’m in the presence of genius. Hayien had me hooked from their very first release. ‘This is magical!’ I said to myself back then, soaking in the early tracks. ‘Branded’, ‘Iosefka’, ‘Acracy’, ‘Love Song Without Love’, ‘Not Yet There is Still One Projectile Left’, ‘Cindr’ and ‘Laminar Flow’ hit me one after the other, and not a single one missed. It felt like I had been combing the beach for scraps of metal and stumbled upon a fountain of gold.
Still not convinced? ‘Iosefka’ is one of the first songs I heard and you can try to tell me if it’s not better than everything Whirr have ever done put together but I won’t hear you. Listen to those layers, listen to the waves and crests, listen to the sadness and hope, listen to that voice and even listen to the lyrics. There is nothing that can make this song any better than it already is.
If I had the choice between never listening to this track again or sacrificing a seminal 90s shoegaze band, I would 100% without hesitation send Ride to the gallows. I pick ‘Iosefka’ over ‘Vapour Trail’, do you see how unhinged that is? Do you see why I say this has to be the work of genius?
Age and the state of the world in general have reinforced my pessimism. In my mind Hayien was a 21st century Ozean – destined to disappear after a handful of perfect tracks and, cruelly, never to achieve the same cult status. Maybe I’d be lucky to get another couple of tracks before then.
But I didn’t realise how unintentionally literal I had been with my ‘this is magical’ statement, because Hayien tossed us a new track every couple of months, and every single one was worth its own song of praise. My pessimism, my cynicism, my skepticism had failed me. None of this should have been possible. And yet here we are. Hayien showed (and continues to show) no signs of letting up. They’ve only been getting more powerful ever since.
I’ll prove it. listen to ‘Tær awæy’ below. It’s relatively more recent, I think it released a few months ago? at the start of the year? I can’t keep track anymore. Same structure. Same vibes. Different song. If you wanted to be critical, you could say ‘hey I don’t know if you noticed but all these tracks sound really similar’ but you have to understand – that is exactly what I want! Give me the same thing over and over again, but make it different every time.
(the ‘æ’ integration gets extra points for obvious reason)
I like to believe that I am a picky, demanding person with unreasonably high expectations. I see myself as that evil Mario Maker 1-1 level with the firesticks. Only Hayien is Mario gliding through like it’s no biggie, and I am seething.
This shouldn’t be possible. And it definitely shouldn’t look so easy.
Anyway, here’s ‘Anyway’.
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