Danny L Harle

As a producer, remixer, and artist in his own right, Danny L. Harle pushes pop music to its limits. A founding member of the pioneering PC Music collective, Harle’s animated, vivid sound — which draws from ’90s dance-pop and millennial dance styles such as gabber — helped shape the hyperpop style and trickled into the mainstream. Along with his own well-regarded releases like 2015’s Broken Flowers EP and 2017′s 1UL EP, his extensive production and remix work for artists including 100 gecs, Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek, and Nile Rodgers reflected the reach of his influence. With his own 2021 debut album Harlecore, he expanded on his innovative blend of high-energy music and high-concept ideas.
Harle learned to play the cello as a young boy, but wasn’t passionate about music until he was 12, when he started playing bass after getting into the music of Madness and Slipknot. At the Royal Academy of Music, he performed in the junior jazz group (his father is saxophonist John Harle). He continued his education at Goldsmiths, University of London and pursued a degree in music. During his time there, Harle composed electronic music on his own and reunited with his old friend A.G. Cook. The pair formed the experimental project Dux Content, which counted a set of pieces composed for the Disklavier and the score to the animated film Heart of Death among its earliest releases. Another formative project was 2012′s Dux Kidz, which featured child singers accompanied by rhythms Cook and Harle shaped to match the flow of the kids’ vocals.
In 2013, Cook founded the label and collective PC Music and Harle became one of its first members, exploring pop songwriting and production. Inspired by ’90s dance-pop hits like Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night” and Haddaway’s “What Is Love,” Harle’s debut single “Broken Flowers” appeared in mid-2013 and helped define PC Music’s trend-setting sound. The following year, he contributed sound design to Tyburn Tree: Dark London, his father’s album with Marc Almond. He also issued his second single “In My Dreams,” which featured vocals by the singer Raffy, and remixed Kero Kero Bonito’s “Sad Beat.” At the end of 2014, Harle and Raffy released a cover of East 17′s 1994 Christmas chart-topper “Stay Another Day.”
The following year, alongside remixes for Spector, Panda Bear, and Years & Years, the Broken Flowers EP arrived. Featuring a slightly reworked version of the title track, it placed on Billboard’s Emerging Artists Chart in the U.S. and received significant airplay on BBC Radio 1 in the U.K. In 2016, Harle worked with Caroline Polachek on that May’s “Ashes of Love,” then collaborated with Carly Rae Jepsen on August’s “Super Natural.” Additionally, he remixed tracks by Pentatonix and MNEK. As part of PC Music’s Month of Mayhem in May 2017 — during which the label premiered a new piece of music every day — he debuted two singles, “1UL” and “Me4U,” that appeared on the 1UL EP later that month. That year, Harle released “Never Thought” under the Danny Sunshine moniker and “Bom Bom,” a collaboration with Australian rapper/singer Tkay Maidza that arrived on Kitsuné in November and became a viral hit. He rounded out his busy 2017 with a remix of Charli XCX’s “After the Afterparty” and produced a track on her mixtape Number 1 Angel.
Harle remained prolific as the 2010s drew to a close. He tapped Clairo for the vocal duties on February 2018′s “Blue Angel,” and returned the favor by appearing on a track on her Diary 001 EP from that year. Though production, songwriting and remixing duties for artists including Superfruit, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Ed Sheeran and Whethan dominated his schedule, he returned in September 2019 with “Part of Me,” a collaboration with PC Music veteran Hannah Diamond. In addition, he executive-produced Polachek’s album from that year, Pang. Following production work on acclaimed 2020 albums such as Rina Sawayama’s Sawayama and Charli XCX’s how i'm feeling now, as well as Polachek’s cover of the Corrs’ “Breathless” and remixes for Georgia and 100 gecs, Harle took center stage with his first full-length Harlecore. A concept album that found him taking on the guises of four DJs spinning hardcore, gabber, makina (a Spanish style similar to happy hardcore), and ambient music in an alternate universe club, it arrived on Mad Decent in February 2021. ~ Heather Phares