Inside Danny L Harle’s Synthetic Universe

Danny L Harle likes to describe his music as “euphoric melancholy” and aims for what he calls “an alien beauty that’s outside of everything.” Since the early 2010s he has released more than 100 tracks and worked with artists including Dua Lipa, Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen.

On Friday he will release Cerulean, which he considers his first full-fledged solo album: “I had to make an album to make this statement.” Harle curates a sprawling playlist of influences — 67 hours and nearly 1,000 tracks — that ranges from pop hits and Italian electro-pop to Renaissance polyphony and nature sounds.

He says he’s drawn to the contrast between surface entertainment and underlying intricacy. Caroline Polachek, who sings on two songs, praised their shared willingness to shape-shift sonically and to blur analog and digital edges. He works in a pared-back studio dominated by screens and speakers rather than vintage hardware, though an antique tenor viol sits on a couch and appears on a Florence + the Machine track he helped produce.

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