Donna Haringwey makes destructive bangers meant to morph your depression into anger and hope. Critically acclaimed as ‘sick tracks bro’, ‘different’ and ‘kinda like modern industrial but more punk’ Donna’s passion for making music has no genre boundaries and is constantly evolving.
How did you get into music? Can you tell us about your background?
I was born in the late ’80s and got into music through skateboarding videos and particularly through the N64 game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater though. I loved all the pop and skate punk bands featured in the game.
I started playing in a bunch of bands, starting with pop punk. When I was about 14/15, my taste shifted towards death metal, black metal, and hardcore. I’ve been writing music for 22 years now—crazy!
Later, I studied sound art and became interested in synths in my mid-20s. I’ve always wanted to combine electronic music with the message and energy found in hardcore and punk, as it offers a very accessible message that doesn’t require reading a hundred academic books to understand the context.
Have you always gravitated to visceral, noisy, raw music and aesthetic?
As I mentioned in the previous question, yeah for sure, that’s definitely what I’m used to creating. However, what I enjoy listening to the most is melancholic music. I really like Erik Satie and Salem—all the emo stuff, basically! 🙂
Can you talk about the emotions that you channel through your music? The obvious ones with this type of music are anger and restlessness, disillusion with the world, but of course, it’s much more complex than that. Can you talk about the emotional aspect of your work? What emotions, feelings, thoughts you’d like to convey with your music?
I think you pretty much nailed it in your question! Those emotions are already complex enough. Anger is an interesting one because it’s usually seen as something ‘bad’ that you should avoid in life. You basically get shamed or judged by (Western) society for getting angry… but I think that’s BS. For me, I’ve learned that when I get angry, it means I deeply give a shit about something. It’s a signal for me to dig deeper and figure out what I really value. It says a lot about who I am.
With my three latest releases with DH, it’s all about how polarized—and therefore disconnected—we’ve become in the West. More specifically, it’s about how much I hate culture wars and the liberal left: if you’re not on my side or your views don’t fit my worldview, you’re labeled as XYZ (nazi, commie, or whatever political insults you can think of).
At first, I thought these culture wars were something abstract, just happening on social media and not affecting everyday interactions (and mainly happening in the US), but that has definitely changed. It’s sad when I can’t have a critical or difficult conversation with someone close to me without being completely judged or not listened to because opinions differ. Unfortunately, I see this happening more and more, and it’s really tragic, as I feel we, as a society, are drifting further apart than ever.
A big part of the emotions I channel through DH is how disconnected I feel from this part of the world. Writing heavy, angry music that has to be played loud helps me cope with this disillusionment and brings me a sense of peace. It’s a bit like doing hardcore sports; you feel accomplished after a gig or an intense vocal recording session. It’s basic catharsis.
Your 2023 release ‘Inside the Vampires Castle’ – followed by a remix release in the following year – was inspired and dedicated to the late Mark Fisher. Can you talk about it?
I find the polarisation we have in the EU, UK or USA quite worrying… Mark Fisher speaks about this in his essay ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’. I’m not a theorist, so better go read or listen to it yourself. But concluding I’d find it quite helpful if the leftist bourgeoise people would finally understand that there are people out there who didn’t have the privilege of reading 300 cultural studies books at university and might have a different reality to theirs and hence a different moral codex which might be equally as valuable as theirs. These witch hunts conducted by people on the ‘morally correct’ side really have to stop.
Therefore I found it quite relevant to dedicate that album to Mark Fisher as those are the issues I’m yelling about.
What are you currently working on?
Right now, I’m focusing a lot on my sound design career because it feels like making a living from music is getting harder and harder. I actually made more money from live shows in 2019 than I do now—wtf! I’m also looking to start another freelance job that’s unrelated to music, which gives me peace of mind in this precarious world we live in. It seems like the first thing going to shit during a ‘crisis’ is the entertainment industry—music and culture included obviously—so it makes sense to work on something that can keep me financially going in case the music thing doesn’t work out.
Musically, I’ve been making very melodic/melancholic slow songs. I’m not sure yet if it’ll be a new alias or if I’ll release it as DH, but I’m really into it and I’m singing a lot on it too. I also made an album with a buddy of mine from NYC; his artist name is Televangelist. You should check him out—he’s a sick producer and a really cool dude too.
Interview Lucia Udvardyova