Interview: Haiku’s Perfect Imperfection

The Brooklyn-based artist and creative art director builds her own music landscape in her EP, Pilot. She sat down with Afterglow to discuss her songwriting process, vocal node-induced quarter-life crisis and how she combines a range of genres in her music to find her own voice.

Written by Grace Robertson

Photo courtesy of Kat Aman

Classically trained solo artist Kat Aman, who goes by the alias Haiku, bends genres and sounds on her first EP, Pilot, taking elements from grunge to R&B and producing something entirely new. Aman says her goal is to expand what we know as popular music — and through her explosive energy and optimism, she’s accomplishing that. Haiku recently sat down with Afterglow (virtually) to discuss her most recent project, her writing process, and more.

Afterglow: You live in Brooklyn, a really iconic music scene. How are you contributing to that musical atmosphere, and how has living there affected your sound?

Haiku: I feel like it's really hard to live in New York and not be affected by its environment. It's very intoxicating. It could be cool, it could be bad, it doesn't matter. Everyone's always doing something, so it really pushes you to just kind of get on the bike and keep cycling. I love the fact that you could walk out into a New York City street and choose to be somebody, or to be nobody at all. I feel like that's really empowering in a way — you can just choose to be whoever you want to be, every single day. And I definitely find that encouraging when trying to write songs because it’s like slipping on a new personality every single (day).

Your music spans multiple genres, including grunge and R&B. How do you balance those different genres and why do you want to expand the boundaries of music?

Haiku: When I first started making music, I was really weird about it because I felt like I needed to be this well-rounded artist whose every song sounds like it could be in this landscape together. It's all just a beautiful little puzzle that fits together. And everything looks great and everything sounds great, and you're just starting to make music, thinking, ‘I’m just doing my damnedest to try my best out here.’ I think now that I'm just kind of doing it, it just feels like I'm gonna do this because I want to — why am I out here making music for other people when I'm not getting paid? If I'm gonna do this, it's gonna be very hard and it's gonna take a lot out of me. And if it's gonna put me through the wringer, then I'm just gonna do it for me and not for anything or anybody else. I want to figure out what I like about it and do that. I'm not polished. I'm not perfect. So I just love being able to be in this new age of music where you can mix genres together, make something new, and have people be open and interested in listening to whatever little creation you come up with. I think it opens a lot more doors for me as an artist and a songwriter, to say ‘screw it’ to the limitations of genre. Let's just make something that's fun.

Congratulations on releasing your EP. How has the album’s reception been in the past three months? Has your perspective on the album changed since its release?

Haiku: It was really exciting to feel like I've given life to this baby creature. It just feels like I'm opening up parts of myself that I haven't been able to open up before. Mostly, I think everyone's been really awesome about it. And I know that people have definitely been digging the weird mixture of sounds and genres in it. Every song is a new take. I definitely hear (...) that there's one song specifically that everyone likes off of it, which I find really cool. Because I was worried about, you know, whether I should be making this a continuous concept EP or something. Now I just feel like I'm young and all over the place. And I feel like my music should be too.

When did you first start writing your own music? How has your style as an artist evolved since then?

Haiku: I started classical voice when I was eight, which sounds really young. But I think that that's just when people start putting their kids into extracurriculars. That's just where I swung up. My freshman year I studied opera, and halfway through the year, I had a quarter-life crisis. I was like, ‘what the f-ck am I doing here?’ It's all great, but it's not me at all. I was halfway through that and I was just like, ‘well, this train is taking me in a direction I'm not comfortable with.’ I definitely felt trapped, and then two different things happened. I realized I had a vocal node so I had to get vocal surgery, and I also decided to trip acid. I very much enjoyed both of these things combined. The next day I applied to NYU and I was like, well, obviously the signs are pointing to the fact that I need to think about other things. It felt like my whole world was wrapped up in this idea of what I needed to be to succeed, or to be good, or talented. And then I needed vocal surgery and I thought, maybe I shouldn't be honing myself into something I’m not. Classical training did not influence my songwriting — it probably made it harder to songwrite, in a way. But I also definitely now take so much of my classical training heavily into what I do now, especially when it comes to technical performance and live performance. And just, note writing, I'll definitely use it in a lot of different ways when writing riffs or writing any type of weird note lines.

Just from your website, social media, and album covers alone, it seems like visual themes, especially color and light, play a big role in your persona as an artist. How would you describe the relationship between visual art and music for you personally?

Haiku: Well, I work as an art director in my day-to-day life, so I work with visuals all the time. Visuals for me are everything. I just love the impact of a visual. I think it's so fun to be able to pair a soundscape with a visual landscape. Being able to have different visuals for different songs or different vibes is really important to me. I'm definitely also super crafty. There's a very crafty aesthetic that I have going on. I don't care if it's a little camp. I love camp. I love craft. I love glitter. In college, I started doing more stuff for my friends, like music videos, and that's how I started getting into that kind of mixed world of music and art. Then I just started doing the art for the music, and now I do both. I built the set for the “Paradise” music video that came out. So that was really fun, because I got to come up with the idea completely by myself and then bring it to life. And so it's really empowering as an artist to feel like not only do I have control over the sound, I also have influence over the visuals. I’m bringing that world to life and having fun with that.

What's next for Haiku? Anything you want readers to know?

Haiku: Oh gosh. What’s next is figuring out what life is (like) during and post-pandemic, understanding more of myself, and what music has for me, and honestly — just getting out there. In a month or two I definitely want to start doing shows again and I hope the New York community is out for that, but for now what I hope people get is that I’m here for you if you want me. We’re all ready for something new, and fun, and fresh, and I just hope I can be that gal.

Be sure to check out Haiku and follow her on Spotify, Instagram, and Facebook.

This interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.