GAYANCE – hellooooo???? feat. Magi Merlin & funkywhat
Montreal-born, Haitian-Canadian, Lisbon-based producer and DJ GAYANCE makes her debut on Tru Thoughts with “hellooooo????”, co-produced with funkywhat and featuring fellow Montreal artist Magi Merlin. Her 2023 debut album Mascarade earned a Polaris Music Prize shortlist nomination; this is her first release since signing to the Brighton label.
The track runs on two modes: an opening push of collective agency, then a pivot into something more celebratory and self-assured. The sonic anchor is tech-nostalgia, specifically vintage Nokia ringtone motifs that Merlin describes as “immigrant uncle” aesthetics, a nod to the Bluetooth and WhatsApp culture that shaped connectivity for many in the diaspora. Drum & Bass, Jungle, and Dancehall thread through it, a nod to soundsystem history pulled into the present with some precision. The collaboration runs deeper than the studio: during a 2024 trip to Rio, GAYANCE and Merlin discovered their families both have roots in Les Cayes, Haiti, which gives the diaspora references a specific weight rather than a general one.
GAYANCE came to music through documentary filmmaking and archiving, documenting Montreal’s beat scene before moving into production and DJing. Highly influenced by the LA beat scene of 2007–2018, Dilla and Madlib, and the broken beat movement in West London, her sound sits at a particular intersection that “hellooooo????” makes audible: club music that’s technically precise and completely uninterested in being cool about it. The playfulness is the point.
