haptic presents: āthe signalā
On āthe signal,ā haptic turns a long creative silence into a focused synth-pop reflection on doubt, trust, and finding direction amid overload.
hapticās āthe signalā marks a return rather than a debut. The project is the work of an artist who spent years inside a bandās cycle of writing, recording, touring, and pushing a shared idea forward, before that chapter closed in 2013. What followed was not a planned hiatus but a prolonged creative silence. Songwriting, once an instinct, became inaccessible. āthe signalā is hapticās first release from the other side of that distance, and its subject is inseparable from the conditions of its creation.
Built on punchy synth-pop momentum, the track draws from 1980s new wave without turning those references into costume. A bouncy bass synthesizer gives the arrangement its motion, while crisp electronic drums and tightly arranged keys keep the song moving with intent. There are traces of psychedelic pop in its color and funk in the bass-led elasticity, but haptic avoids treating influence as a checklist. The result feels informed by Foals, Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala, and the studio-minded pop traditions of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, while keeping its direct, uncluttered frame.
That restraint matters. āthe signalā is richly assembled, yet it does not try to fill every available space. Layers of vocals arrive as detail rather than decoration, widening the songās emotional field without blurring its focus. The melody is modern in its phrasing, able to shift between uncertainty and resolve without making either state sound theatrical. Each new element seems placed to sharpen the central feeling: someone trying to identify one dependable thing amid a stream of competing information, expectations, and internal doubts.
The songās search for certainty is deliberately unresolved. haptic does not present anxiety as a private malfunction that can be fixed by a single revelation. Instead, āthe signalā sits inside the everyday confusion of trying to decide what is trustworthy when noise, both external and self-generated, becomes difficult to separate. The narrator is exhausted by second-guessing but remains attentive. That distinction gives the song its quiet conviction. It is not about reaching a final answer. It is about continuing to listen when an answer has not appeared yet.
That approach also gives the release a wider emotional reach than a simple comeback story. The experience of losing confidence in oneās own judgement, then gradually learning to make room for intuition again, is familiar far beyond creative work. haptic turns that process into a concise pop song, one that acknowledges overwhelm without mistaking it for defeat. The arrangement supports this idea by keeping its energy physical and forward-moving. Even at its most inward-looking, the track does not sink into stillness.
There is tension between the songās polished surface and its unsettled core. The production is confident, built from bright synthesizer lines, layered harmonies, and a bass part that keeps nudging the song ahead. But that confidence is never used to erase the uncertainty at its center. haptic lets the music sound ready before the narrator feels fully certain, which makes the songās momentum more meaningful. It suggests that movement can precede clarity, and that making something new can test whether trust is beginning to return.
As the first of two closely spaced singles, with āin the other roomā due the following week, āthe signalā establishes haptic as a project shaped by patient reconstruction rather than reinvention for its own sake. It honors the years when the songs would not come, but it refuses to make those years the entire story. More importantly, it places listening at the center of recovery. hapticās āthe signalā does not claim to cut through every distraction. It simply locates a small, persistent point of recognition and follows it.
We also had the opportunity to ask the artist a few questions. Keep reading for more!
1. What made this the right moment to return to songwriting after such a long silence?
Honestly, Iām not sure I chose the moment. I think the silence ran out. Thereās a version of that gap where I was waiting for the right conditions, the right setup, enough space and clarity to sit down and write something worth writing. That version is probably a lie I told myself. What actually happened is that I changed enough, through the years and through the kind of work I found myself doing, that the songs I wanted to make finally had some distance from the songs I used to make. The silence wasnāt empty. It was full of things that took a long time to become useful.
2. How did the experience of your previous band shape the way you approached haptic as a solo project?
In a band, identity distributes itself across people. The name belongs to everyone, the persona gets built collectively, no single person is fully exposed. Thereās cover in the collectiveā¦ creatively, relationally, in every direction. When something isnāt working, thereās someone else in the room whose instincts you trust, whose ear you lean on, who catches what you miss. That kind of creative friendship is something I didnāt fully understand the value of until it wasnāt there anymore.
haptic is what happens when thatās gone and you make something anyway. I donāt say that to romanticize solitudeā¦ I genuinely miss the collaborative part, the back-and-forth, the version of a song that only exists because someone else pushed back on the first draft. What Iāve found instead is that when you canāt hand a problem to another person, you have to go somewhere you wouldnāt have gone otherwise. The gap where a bandmate used to be becomes a space you have to fill yourself, which means going further in, or further out, than youād have needed to if you had help. I think some of whatās novel about this project exists specifically because I didnāt have the option to rely on anyone elseās strengths to compensate for my own limitations.
And then haptic goes further still. Itās solo work where the instinct is to make the identity disappear rather than centre it. haptic is faceless. The name is more a sensation than a person. If the band years taught me how much of being a musician is about managing what people see rather than what they hear, haptic is the deliberate dismantling of that reflex. The question Iām actually asking now is: does the sound reach you? That feels more honest to me than anything I was asking before, and Iām not sure I could have gotten there without the loss of everything that made the earlier version of this easier.
3. āthe signalā deals with uncertainty and overload. What helped you turn that feeling into a song?
Finding the right image for it. I think, in a way, overload resists being written about directly. Almost like if you try to describe it, you end up recreating it, and the listener drowns along with you. The thing that unlocked the song was thinking about a signal in the technical sense: something transmitted, with no guarantee of reception. All that noise, all that output, and you donāt know if any of it is really reaching the right recipient. That felt more honest than trying to articulate what the overload was actually about. The uncertainty is in the metaphor rather than spelled out, which I think lets the listener bring their own version of it.
4. The track combines new-wave synths, layered vocals, and a bouncy bass line. Where did its sound begin?
With a feeling more than a reference. I wanted something that moved, something that had forward momentum in its body, even as the content was doing something harder. Some of the music I grew up on managed that balance really well, that tension between a sound that wants to make you move and a lyric that wants to make you sit down. The feel of the bass was really the anchor point. Once I had that, the rest of the texture had something to organize itself around.
5. How does āin the other roomā connect to āthe signal,ā both musically and emotionally?
Good question! I think theyāre sort of asking the same question from opposite ends, which is maybe why they belong together even though they donāt sound alike.
In āthe signal,ā I write about the need to reach out and receive a message, a confirmation, something from the universe, a frequency clean enough to navigate by. Iām sort of ācosmically unmoored,ā reaching outward and upward toward something that may or may not respond. āin the other room,ā I canāt locate myself in relation to something intimateā¦ a person, a life, a sense of belonging thatās physically close but permanently separated by a wall I didnāt build and canāt take down. One is reaching toward the immense. The other is reaching toward the specific. But both are reaching, and neither finds what theyāre looking for by the end.
Thereās something in the word āotherā appearing in both tracks that I didnāt fully plan but canāt quite explain away either. The other side. The other room. Both others are unreachable. The nature of the unreachability is completely different from the cosmic to the relational. But the condition of not being able to get through to what you need is the same in both. I think that shared condition is what makes them feel like they belong to the same project rather than just the same release.
Musically theyāre deliberately different in texture and in what that texture is doing emotionally. āthe signalā is more saturated, more overloaded, a bit like the sound is doing what the lyrics describe. āin the other roomā has more space in it, which felt right for a song about absence and proximity rather than noise.
6. After finishing these songs, has your relationship with songwriting changed?
Thereās something that happens when you finish something after a long time not finishing things. The first completed song in years carries this strange weight, like proof of something you werenāt sure you could still do. Iām not sure I have a clean answer for that yet. What I do notice is that Iām less interested in songwriting as a performance of feeling and more interested in it as a way of working something out precisely, finding the exact language for an experience, getting it accurate. Whether thatās a change or just a maturation, I honestly canāt tell from inside it.
