Helena Hauff
Helena Hauff is a Hamburg-based DJ and producer who learned to mix at the city's Golden Pudel Club, an underground venue destroyed by fire in 2016, after abandoning her studies in fine art, physics and systematic music science to pursue DJing full time. At Golden Pudel she hosted a night called Birds and Other Instruments, a residency that became central to her identity as a DJ working across techno, acid, electro and EBM, and she has described the club as the place that shaped nearly every part of her musical persona. Hauff's studio releases, including material on Werkdiscs, Blackest Ever Black and PAN starting in 2013, and her collaborative Black Sites project with Golden Pudel associate F#X, have run alongside a touring DJ career that she says remains her most defining pursuit even as her production profile grew through her Ninja Tune-adjacent work with Actress's Werk Discs label. Her sets, built on an unapologetically analogue approach and a dark, uncompromising blend of techno and energetic electro, have been championed on BBC Radio 1 by DJs including B.Traits and Benji B. She released her debut artist album, Discreet Desires, on Actress's label, marking a rare foray into melody within her otherwise raw, club-focused sound.