New York-based producer DJ Haram presents “Distress Tolerance,” the second single from her debut album, Beside Myself (Hyperdub), out July 18, 2025. Following the “electrifying, brash energy” (FLOOD) of instrumental lead single “Voyeur,” today’s single “Distress Tolerance” puts DJ Haram’s unflinching and heartbroken poetic verse front and center.

Originally conceived as a poem, “Distress Tolerance” finds DJ Haram in conversation with inspiring thinkers like Audre Lorde or Nawal El Saadawi. Recalling the song’s genesis, DJ Haram comments: “I had a lot to get off my chest and wrote this poem on tour. I insisted on trying to perform it on that same tour, even though it didn’t have a beat and I didn’t have the words memorized either. If you’re a musician, you put it in the music.”

Beside Myself is testament to the survival of the spirit as an artist reckoning with the present global hellscape. A reference to rage, grief, and the alienation of feeling out of step with the world, the album title functions as a double entendre. The self-proclaimed “multidisciplinary propagandist” insists on evolving in times of war and weaponized entertainment, challenging herself and her peers, asking: “how can this be, how can we live with ourselves, how can we find each other and the truth, how can we get free?” The answer is never so explicit but the out-loud musing places her firmly beside herself, travelling a lonely road, building her space, sharpening her technical production and lyricism to new focus and intention.

On Beside Myself, DJ Haram is joined by a swarm of friends and collaborators collectively navigating pain, purpose, and in occasional moments of joyful respite mocking the strife. The album features MCs Armand Hammer (billy woods + ELUCID), Bbymutha, SHA RAY, her 700 Bliss partner Moor Mother, Dakn, underground rap god August Fanon, Egyptian producer El Kontessa, Jersey Club producer Kay Drizz, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, and guitarist Abdul Hakim Bilal. Beside Myself has a grungy pessimistic futurism that offers no easy resolutions. As the title suggests, there are frictions at the heart of this album— inner and outer. Yet the catharsis and drama it produces are rarely so defiantly delivered.

To celebrate the release of Beside Myself, DJ Haram will host an album listening party on July 23 at Brooklyn’s Public Records featuring a Q+A with Kode9.

DJ Haram Tour Dates
Mon. June 9 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Lot Radio (Monday Night Raw) *
Sat. Oct. 11 – Krakow, PL @ Unsound Festival
Fri. Nov. 7 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? ^