haha Laughing makes music you can’t talk over.
The blistering noise-rap project started during COVID as an outlet for Jay Dilick – something to crawl out of a dark headspace with. “I was really depressed when I was younger,” Dilick says. “Death Grips and stuff like that really helped me out of a funk. So I was like, I’ll just make shit that reminds me of that.” Initially enlisted as a hypeman, his partner Aby Oviedo rounds out the twopiece as a musical collaborator.
Despite their origins, on new EP BIG WHATEVER, the band is finding their blue sky. Rather than writing songs about the things they struggle with in life, the duo wanted to write music that felt good. “Instead of dark heavy shit bringing me down, this one’s more like: Yeah, there’s a lot of dark heavy shit, but whatever, you gotta just keep doing it,” Oviedo says.
The record has a sporty, braggadocious energy to it, built out of hours of couch sessions with the Olympics on in the background. When people ask what kind of music it is, Dilick laughs. “It’s experimental rap, I guess. I’m definitely writing raps over songs. I don’t really know what to call it.”
What they do know is what they want the live show to feel like. Oviedo spent years working the door at Hotel Vegas, watching crowds zone out through set after set, and decided they wanted no part of that. “That’s another reason why I like to be a little weird and silly on stage,” Oviedo says. “I’m like, ‘Look at me, I’m up here being a fucking freak. Be free.’”
Dilick echoes the sentiment. “I wanted to make a band you can’t talk over,” he says. “You either got to leave the room or get into it.” Their tour kickoff at Hotel Vegas on April 24, captured in this month’s People To Wave To docu-concert, was proof of just that: loud, chaotic, and impossible to ignore.
This month’s video captures both sides of haha Laughing: from the living room, where Dilick and Oviedo are relaxed, funny and surprisingly open, to the stage, where they are chaotic, silly, and loud. Filmed and edited by Kyra Bruce and Audra Webbe, it’s a portrait of a band that started as one person on a couch trying to feel better, and turned into something that makes a whole room feel that way too.
“I want them to feel like they’re going to be okay,” Oviedo says. “Just keep truckin’.”
The Austin Chronicle Presents: People To Wave To is a docu-concert series created by Kyra Bruce and produced by Audra Webbe. Find more on YouTube.
