[AIWTB] pt. 1 - Danny L Harle

Artists I've wanted to be, episode 1

Danny L Harle

Photo credit: Mads Perch for Nylon 

Coming from Britain, Daniel Jack Eisner Harle has gradually made a name for himself inside dance music circles. A development that apparently didn't have to happen. Through nothing other than the cultural and personal specifities of his interests, he took the dance music scene by storm and singlehandedly brought me back into the wonderfully euphoric world of trance music and happy hardcore.

It's relatively widely known that Danny L Harle has very extensive background in classical music. He attended several fairly prestigious music schools, all the way to the Royal Academy in London. This interest likely didn't completely emerge out of thin air, as his father is awarded composer, educator and saxophone player John Harle.

That classical background is important for his music overall. However, in the end Danny L Harle usually gets connected to popular music. While still at school he got into Scandinavian skweee and would later write his thesis connecting real chamber instruments with electronic chiptune sounds. 

Later, he'd answer about his school days on his XL Recordings page: "I’m not actually interested in music. I thought I was but studying music made me realise that I wasn’t. I was interested in the way music makes me feel, and it’s what I live in pursuit of."

The most telling sign of what was about to follow was Harle reconnecting with a fellow, highly influential classmate and their shared interest of maximalizing pop music. 

If that doesn't already scream the existence of a certain music label, movement, and inception of a now very popular genre, then there's more to educate yourself on ;)

Either way, Danny L Harle and that classmate bearing the name A.G. Cook, started a duo together and later formed the aforementioned PC Music. At first Danny L Harle didn't actively create the music he does now. Harle had to simplify his musical language a lot to fit into the circles and genre he had gotten into with Cook. Wiki states Harle was invited to perform pop music at one event and felt guilty for only playing pieces by other artists. So, he wrote "Broken Flowers", which would launch the Danny L Harle we know and love today. He can be credited to co-producing music for Tommy Cash, Dua Lipa, Caroline Polachek, Olly Alexander and others.

Harlecore

Credit: official album cover art by EG Huang

The thing that single-handedly got me into the sphere of hard dance music and re-ignited my love for dance was his first large solo project inspired by happy hardcore "Harlecore". Set in the ethereal "Club Euphoria" Harle, in collaboration with several artists, takes on several DJ personas: DJ Danny, DJ Mayhem, DJ Ocean and MC Boing. I was personally mostly inspired by the trance adjacent DJ Danny music and the harder hardcore inspired sound of DJ Mayhem. Alongside the album came several tracks that would fall in the ballpark of Harlecore as a creative "era". The album mainly plays with catchiness, hooks and focuses on a club and festival-centered escapist euphoria.

The interesting part is that Danny L Harle doesn't shy away from stereotypes and consciously approaches them. In the visual language of the album, in true hyperpop fashion, Danny L Harle over-expresses all the conventions. From sickly sweet bubblegum tracks like "Take My Heart Away" to the actively annoying MC Boing mc-ing all the way down to the visual language of the accompanying videos, in which Harle portraits himself as a transcendental being, the intentional irony and sarcasm are hard to ignore. It is here that I realised that the album is an abstraction of dance music and the cult of "pop" that is painted in a very pretentious style. Pretentious, pompous, extravagant, but in some sense also incredibly, endearingly authentic. Not attempting to water itself down to seem more professional or acceptable.

While this abstraction is the point of the album, it's also the reason it's flawed. To a degree Danny being huge is both kind of funny, but also a little narcissistic, I'd say. MC Boing was unfortunately only aggravating to me and I wasn't such a huge fan of DJ Ocean. Perhaps Danny L Harle wrote the music a little too outside of his own experience and sentiments as well, but the visuals inevitably point at the intention of making everything hyper and intentionally leaving this dissonance out in the open.

However, what followed this year in 2026, fixed several of the flaws of Harlecore in my opinion, while also being significantly different. Even the artist himself stated that this is in fact his debut album, and not Harlecore.

Cerulean

Credit: official album cover art by Yuma Burgess

"Cerulean" takes the dance music epitome Harle has been working with for a long time now and combines it with art music. His work with the singers in this album is a lot more complex and "virtuosic" and more like actual songs in comparison to Harlecore's short repeated phrases. Cerulean relies more on structure provided by the melody and lyrics of the singers. The structures of the songs overall no longer depend as heavily on repetition and symmetry. Chord progressions and polymeters also come in sometimes. It's more musically informed and brings in real instrumentation as well - trumpets, accordion, orchestral drums and electronic choirs make their appearance. The musical elements in the album are a lot more sparce, bubbly synth lines are exchanged for airy and voicy pads. It comes off as a lot more contemplative, introverted, insightful, full of longing. All within the dance music idiom. From what I understood, Danny L Harle wanted to explore what people thought and felt while listening to music like this. As someone commented: "Crying in the club this summer." It feels a lot more personal to the artist as well. 

When I tried to make something similar, consciously extracting and appropriating the pure cinematic sound of this album proved to be more difficult than I had thought.

Either way, it is through Danny L Harle I have slowly rebuilt a loving relationship with 4-to-the-floor EDM and he certainly shows that even this kind of music can merge with higher artistic intent. Danny L Harle, as most PC Music artists, has also shown me the hidden beauty of authenticity in pretence. Certainly the greatest takeaway from Harle's music to me is his excellent work with motifs, vocals and themes, and his orchestration. For a time I was obsessed with everything that Harlecore was about. I even tried to replicate the so very human pretentiousness. Harle's music lead me back to the trance and house music from the late 90s and my beloved Y2K trance that I grew up with.

I am certainly looking forward to more lovely electro pop and trance inspired sounds. Give his stuff a listen, it's well worth it.