Haich Ber Na Wants You to Make Some Friends

Some music needs to be played. Haich Ber Na's new EP needs to befriended. MUSIC FOR MAKING FRIENDS, from the merch to the rollout, is built to pull people off their screens and into the same room. It's a fitting move for an artist whose sound already feels like a meeting point. Haich Ber Na doesn't fit neatly into a genre, mostly because he's spent years building his own. This EP is the clearest picture yet of what that world looks like.

Before the EP landed, Haich Ber Na took it on the road as a series of listening parties. For him, the payoff wasn't the playback, it was the people. He finally got to meet the listeners behind the streams and hear how they found him. "Seeing fans who didn't know each other in person but had connected online through my music felt super special," he says. The EP was already doing its job before it was even out. One fan from Seoul even told him his music "got her through a rough time in high school." He calls that "a pretty big deal,".

A lot of listeners, this writer included, first found him through "Hallelujah!", his collaboration with Paris Texas. The connection goes back further than that song though. He met Felix in 2018 through a mutual friend and Louie came later, around 2021. "They're my bros in real life. We always had common ground musically, which I think people don’t expect from listening to our solo music"

Starting with the EP’s singles, the first thing you saw when listening to “Maybe We Should Break Up” or “All I Need” was the faces. Each cover shows a different person all wearing the same MUSIC FOR MAKING FRIENDS shirt. They aren't models, they're strangers chosen to represent people from different walks of life. Shot with photographer Jordan Core, the covers were meant to feel "immediate and almost low effort." The final EP artwork follows suit with the same logo printed on a CD. The physical items carry Haich Ber Na’s "message over aesthetic” idea off the screen and into real life.

The stripped-back visuals trace straight to Juergen Teller, the photographer who spent years shooting major fashion work almost entirely on an iPhone. The lesson Haich took from it was “It's not about the equipment an artist uses but more so getting the idea across." Haich Ber Na has also been reading Jeremy Deller’s 2023 book Art Is Magic, which digs into Deller's graphic work with bold lettering and political statements. Deller is also known for large public spectacles that pull in strangers as participants. Bold type & strangers brought together, that’s truly what the EP is all about.

A run of live shows is on the way in Europe, with the U.S and Asia hopefully to follow. He's working on new music now and plans to release it faster than usual. "I don't want long gaps in between releases," he says. "I want people to hear the latest music from me while I'm also still excited about it." For now, MUSIC FOR MAKING FRIENDS is out there doing what it promises to, greeting every person it comes by.