We believe that underground names need more recognition, so this week’s feature is dedicated to Helena Hauff.
We guess most of you know Helena Hauff. And for ones who don’t – time to make up what you’ve been missing! She is present on the scene a few years now, but her work must get more recognition.
Helena Hauff is a DJ and producer from Hamburg, Germany. Her sonic aesthetic is rooted in a twilight-lit area of colliding sharp acid sounds, cold Detroit rhythmics, monolith industrial scapes and even minimalist wave atmospherics. She is known for her “stripped-down techno and electro tracks” that are recorded using strictly analog equipment and draws influences from acid house, EBM and industrial music.
Helena’s sound world is intense, electrified, futuristic, but with strong traces of underlying emotionalism and experimentalism.
During a relatively short time she managed to release several releases on such notable labels as Werk Discs, Ninja Tune, PAN and Blackest Ever Black. Her influences can be spotted in her precise and eclectic mixtapes, where heavyweight industrial beats, abstract experimentalism meet EBM rawness or the elegance of more atmospheric forms of techno.
Helena’s musical path started from digging records from her local library collection, which led her to early exposure to such artists as The Cure or Karlheinz Stockhausen. This helped her to develop a unique taste and use it for realising her own artistic visions.
Moreover Helena’s creativity stretches far beyond her solo moniker. She recently joined James Dean Brown in his legendary neo-tribal Hypnobeat project. In addition, she is also half of Black Sites project along with F#X, which also has releases on Panzerkreuz and PAN labels. Moreover Helena is a resident of Golden Pudel club in Hamburg.
In December 2017, she became the first ever female DJ to be named BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix of the year She runs her own label called Return to Disorder.
