Taipei: PURE G presents Incessent with Helena Hauff

Event: PURE G presents Incessent with Helena Hauff
Date: Friday, December 15, 2023
Time: 11pm-5am
City/Country: Taipei/Taiwan
Venue: FINAL, 10666, Taiwan, Taipei City, Da’an District, Section 1, Fuxing South Road, 249號號地下一樓
Organisers: PURE G
Line-up: Helena Hauff, KUAN, L1H & Sulk
Tickets: NT$800 (At the door)

There’s no mistaking a Helena Hauff set. Lesser DJs might reach for the same tracks, digging into her signature seam of electro, grubby techno and boot-stomping EBM, but few can recreate a dancefloor in the sweaty grip of Hauffmania.

The Hamburg DJ’s unstoppable rise has come with zero concessions to mainstream tastes; since making her name at the legendary Golden Pudel by mixing obscure minimal wave with tough-as-nails throbbers from artists like Front 242 and Luke Eargoggle, she’s made the leap to festival headliner without diluting her style one bit. And in a world of try-hards and self promoters, Hauff’s edge of eccentricity actually seems to ring true: she claims to have never bought any records as a teenager.

She lived off white bread and cheese for months to afford her Roland drum machines. She’s not on social media and she doesn’t have a credit card. Her entire existence seems as refreshingly analogue as her record collection.

Also, she records her tracks strictly using analogue equipment, usually in one take.

Her full-length debut, 2015's Discreet Desires, contains some of her most melodic material, while 2018's Qualm is more stripped-down but no less energetic. Hauff has released a handful of EPs, including 2019's Living with Ants and 2022's Living with Ladybirds.

As a DJ, she was the first woman to be awarded BBC's Essential Mix of the year (in 2017), and her major commercially issued mixes are 2020's "Kern, Vol. 5" (Tresor) and 2023's "fabric presents Helena Hauff."