Helena Hauff (@helena-hauff) expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, techno, EBM, and post-punk. Her powerful drum beats collide with freely wandering melodies. Her sound is tailor-made for those who appreciate raw, yet restrained intensity, dragging the dance floor into a frosty abyss. Her debut album "A Tape" in 2015 garnered attention for its intricate manipulation of sound, where she meticulously arranges gritty and rough noises, filling in the gaps with rhythmic intricacies. Her other releases, "Discreet Desires" and the EP "Have You Been There, Have You Seen," experimentally layer and intertwine, with twisted waveforms akin to rusted artifacts, creating an unfriendly listening experience that compels bodily movement to escape Helena Hauff's auditory swamp. It evokes sounds from the Hague's western coast in the Netherlands—blending synthesized tones of Italo Disco with the gritty spirit of Detroit. Despite its unfriendliness, "Have You Been There, Have You Seen" still offers warmth and rhythmic service to dancers with tracks like "Nothing Is What I Know" and "Gift." This year, renowned dance label fabric Records recognized Helena Hauff's unique selections and released "fabric presents Helena Hauff," recreating the dance scenes she once fostered at the Golden Pudel club in Hamburg, Germany.

Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a heavy box of records across the world), Helena's reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency. She was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017, Crack Magazine declared Helena "The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)" and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. With razor-sharp precision, her melodies redefine Electro/Techno, adhering to her signature cold and dark taste over the past decade, regardless of current musical trends. Utilizing turntables for minimalist yet forceful performances, she effortlessly navigates between peaks and troughs, even with the risk of needle skips, confidently rolling cigarettes as she cruises at high speeds between highs and lows, making her a unique and standout figure in the scene.

PURE Guest.055 Helena Hauff

my live set from sustain release year 10 at the grove friday night. this was one of the wyldest vibes ive experienced while playing live and i hope you can feel the feral energy within and enjoy <3

xx

Sepehr (live) @ Sustain Release Year 10

A lesson in rhythm from a former De School resident.

When it comes to minimalist dance music, Ruben Üvez, AKA Konduku, is one of the best in the game right now. With a masterful and ever-shapeshifting understanding of rhythm, the Berlin-based artist crafts sublime dance music with a staunchly leftfield bent. Don't just take our word for it: how many DJs, after all, can claim to have moved De School to a puddle of tears?

Musically, Üvez is hard to pin down. He's often billed as a techno artist, but actually you'll find his sound sits outside of the genre's many conventions. With an outsider's curiosity, he leans into diverse moods, tempos and genres, though one throughline is always how he arranges his drums. Whether it be deep, Nobu-core techno such as 2023's Hayal EP or UK beat science á la Peverelist on 2019's  Gegek, he leads with rhythm across his DJing and production. The end product is a hypnotic, one-of-a-kind sound that hits the body before the brain has time to catch up. In short, it slaps.

As Üvez's RA Podcast demonstrates, he's got a serious knack for crafting and selecting tunes that can  deeply captivate a dance floor. Clocking in at just over 90 minutes, RA.967 is an excursion through a timeless sound, packed with long, layered blends, flick-of-the-wrist transitions, locked grooves and spine-tingling atmospherics. In 2020, we called Ruben Üvez one of techno's brightest new talents. This mix sees him ascending to a seat at the top table.

@kondukukonduku

Read more at ra.co/podcast/967

RA.967 Konduku

Regis and Function's first mix in over 10 years is a unique paean to Silent Servant, heavy on unreleased material.

When it came time for RA to compile our Albums of the 2010s, one record with a tauntingly limited availability of 500 copies was never in doubt: Sandwell District's era-defining 'Feed-Forward'. Encompassing Karl O'Connor (Regis), Peter Sutton (Female), David Sumner (Function) and Juan Mendez (Silent Servant), Sandwell District had the underground in a vice grip for over a decade.

The collective imploded in 2013, with Sumner and O'Connor's relationship appearing beyond repair. And yet, an unlikely second phase is here, featuring imminent comeback LP 'End Beginnings' and their return to the RA Podcast after 16 years. In 2023, the trio of Function, Regis and Silent Servant had been performing and laying down new material before the latter's shock death last January. It's in the shadow of loss that this unique mix was forged.

Founded in 2002 as a spiritual sister to seminal Downwards, Sandwell truly began to hit its straps in the late '00s, as shadow-stalking cuts sliced through clubland orthodoxy like a switchblade. In parallel, the label's artwork—a noir recombination of Burroughs cut-ups, DIY zines and arthouse amour that Silent Servant made his own—helped fortify a movement which placed an aesthetic premium on grit, grain and sadism.

By the early 2010s, this fixation on the dark arts had utterly permeated the mood inside techno's masonic temples. Labels like Blackest Ever Black, Stroboscopic Artefacts, Avian and Modern Love were in their pomp, razorwire legends like Severed Heads and Chris & Cosey benefited from second winds, and it was briefly a jailable offence to not have a press photo in black and white. 'Feed-Forward' was the exceptional coronating statement.

RA.978 features a stack of unheard recordings from each of the trio, as well as close allies Stefanie Parnow and Tropic of Cancer, while also gathering many of Silent Servant's all-time favourite songs, including Psychic TV, Grace Jones and Galaxie 500. It's a strikingly vulnerable listen, one without many parallels on the Podcast. We're glad to run it. – Gabriel Szatan

Read more and find the tracklist here: ra.co/podcast/978
Read our new feature with Sandwell District here: https://ra.co/features/4426

RA.978 Sandwell District

Smoke Machine Podcast 155 DJ Tool

Ciao tutti 💖
So happy to share the recording from my last set at Open Ground from December 2024. 

It was an emotional journey ~ I wanted to tell a story of diving into underwater dream lands, where spirit guides and glitchy creatures meet and send us messages from the other side... where sound takes over the brain and opens something in the heart and body.
I waved through many genres ~ ambient, jungle, electro, dubstep, drill, jazz, techno and the wonky in-between. It felt like I had the chance to express a fuller spectrum of who I am as a music lover. 🙏

That night, I had the honour of opening for the legend Surgeon ~ someone who’s deeply inspired my path since the very beginning. Sharing that moment with him and connecting was just wow. 🥹

Open Ground truly is one of the most special places on earth ~ the care, the sound, the freedom, the community, the crew… just perfection. 

So grateful to be invited back this saturday ! (26.07.2025) 
Don’t skip ~ come sweat and feel with us 🌀💎💦

~ with love & gratitude ~ 
GiGi🧜‍♀️

GiGi FM at Freifeld / Open Ground 14.12.2024

Brøther - Soul Patrol

Two and a half hours of blistering electro from DJ Stingray, recorded live at Studio Spaces for RA In Residence: fabric

RA Live

RA Live 2016.12.17 - DJ Stingray, fabric In Residence, Studio Spaces, London

And so we arrive at the end of the year, New Years Eve to be precise and there was only one DJ we wanted to have us screw-facing and fist pumping in 2018. Enter Stingray with a furious 90 minutes of power.

Recorded at his set at Katharsis Festival, it's one of DJ Stingray's best and favourite performances of the year so we're naturally thrilled to present it you today.

2017, you were turbulent, you were, at times, stressful but throughout the madness, there was a constant and that was DJ Stingray knocking it out of the park. Each and every time

More exclusive music

In Session: DJ Stingray

Download the set here: 
https://corenews.me/dj-stingray-essential-mix-2019-03-02/
Tracklist over here:
https://tracklists.thomaslaupstad.com/dj-stingray-essential-mix-2019-03-02-tracklist-playlist/

Core News - http://corenews.me/

DJ Stingray - Essential Mix 2019-03-02

Recording of Helena Hauff's & DJ Stingray's set at Dekmantel Festival 2016.

In Session: DJ Stingray

Mixmag