Fact Mix: Happy New Tears

Happy New Tears chases euphoria into melancholy and back again in her heart enlarging Fact mix.

Happy New Tears wants to make you cry. By her own admission, the Berlin-based, Zambian-Dutch DJ and producer tirelessly chases the most emotional moments in the club, teetering on the threshold between transcendence and dissociation, where euphoria tips into melancholy and back again. Spinning contemporary club music through progressive trance and Rotterdam hardcore, she’s tapped in to both your pleasure centres and your tear ducts, driven by the belief that “crying is a beautiful expression of the heart.”

Having cut her teeth at Berlin Community Radio as a member of No Shade, a party, collective and DJ training program for women, non-binary and trans artists, Happy New Tears is no stranger to stretching new club sounds to breaking point while paying homage to iconoclasts past. Her Fact mix is no different. “The mix blends a wide array of sonic worlds and is a sound exploration of deconstructed sounds, trance influences, reimagined Ice Spice and Lil Uzi Vert bangers led by techno tempos and squeezing in some hardcore,” she explains.

“This last genre is especially closely connected to me as my hometown Rotterdam is the founding place of the music and its surrounding gabber subculture, which was formed as an underground, anti-establishment movement with small, underground raves,” she continues. “This ethos of deviation is a key belief I try to stay true to.” Gliding through near future club liquidators from VR Chads, Lauren Duffus and Re:drum, serotonin flooding edits of Ice Spice, Lil Uzi Vert and Oklou from Grasps, Know V.A. and Ghili respectively, as well as Eurotrance anthems from Fragma, Paul van Dyk and U96, the mix serves as an escape for rushing heads and racing hearts, leaving us somewhere new, with Happy New Tears.

You can find Happy New Tears on Instagram, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Happy New Tears will play at Amsterdam’s FIBER Festival, which takes place between May 11 – 14. Tickets are available now.

Tracklist:

VR Chads – ‘L.I.T.E. (Log Information Transfer Error)’
Xen Model – ‘Lurch’
Age Reform – ‘Enduro’
Holly Herndon – ‘Eternal (Morten HD Edit)’
Lauren Duffus – ‘Wires’
Ziúr – ‘U Feel Anything?’
Coucou Chloe – ‘Drop Ten’
Quasistate & Ytem – ‘Trance Continuum’
Ice Spice – ‘Munch (Kavari Edit)’
Re:drum – ‘Acra’
Lil Uzi Vert – ‘Just Wanna Rock (Know V.A. Edit)’
Ice Spice – ‘In Ha Mood (Grasps Remix)’
The Bug – ‘Hammer’ [Feat. Flowdan]
Paul Seul – ’12 Stars’
Arca – ‘Time (Mëll Edit)’
Oklou – ‘God’s Chariots’ (Ghili Remix)
Fragma – ‘Toca Me’
Paul van Dyk – ‘For An Angel (PVD E-Werk Club Mix)’
Raed Raees – ‘Greekonos’
Trax Haven – ‘Sun Phase (Seekit 160 Edit)’
Lisa More – ‘Wet Ass Bby’
Abssys – ‘Ex 0 Dust’
Madonna – ‘Frozen (M.A.R.E.C. Edit)’
U96 – ‘Club Bizarre’
VR Chads – Hyperspeed [Feat. laced]
Overmono – ‘So U Kno (Mathman Edit)’
Underworld – ‘Born Slippy (Pablo G Bootleg)’

Listen next: Fact Mix – Grand River