Because she is a product and various teams of marketing people (label, merchandising, social media, manager, …) were convinced she could be turned into hard cash… and they were right. She is the quintessential business techno influencer . Everybody played their part, and they did so in a very professional way from a financial / monetizing point of view. I dislike it as much as you do… but they couldn’t care less. She could retire today and be good for the rest of her life. Mission accomplished !
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Absolutely agree, stinky basements with 200 people was where my techno journey started. Techno in massive venues just doesn’t make sense to me, but I do like trance in massive venues.
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Nah, that’s a nice sentiment but untrue. I haven’t been on a social network besides YouTube and SoundCloud if that counts in ten years. If you opt out of social media, you’re missing out on a lot. These forums are also social media.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen people together but all locked into their phones. Countless club and party scenes where everyone is passively recording.
You can opt out, check out, tune out, drop out. And you will miss out.
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Of course. I started going to techno parties in Ghent (Belgium) in the second half of the nineties. There were worse places to grow up! We had R&S records, so a lot of great international artists found their way to Ghent. But we also had a lot of local talent and some great record shops. Lots of parties at smaller venues, squating places, old factories. That’s no longer possible, gentrification has changed all that…
Back then there were bigger events like kozzmozz and I love techno, which we found too commercial. So friends organised parties like “I hate techno” and “I love money” with elektro, acid, warp stuff, … The “really obnoxious stuff” was played in discotheques. That’s what we thought anyway. Now that obnoxious stuff is hyped as the sound of the Belgian underground. And the guys that played at the larger events are still big names. There was commercial techno back then, and some of the names that get dropped here as the real deal were too commercial for us (or not experimental / hard enough).
There are still bigger places here (kompass) that play the new harder but monotonous stuff. And there are still small parties with “more interesting” music, though not as much as their used to be (or I’m not invited 
)
Charlotte De Witte is a local. She played a surprise afternoon gig on a big square in Ghent a couple of months ago and another surprise gig at the Gentse Feesten. I was there the first time, it was good fun. Some hardhitting tunes, but mostly similar tracks with no interesting buildup. It’s not entirely my cup of tea, but also not too far from some of the acid and techno parties I attended. I’ve heard far worse sets for sure. All in all, good vibes all around. It’s beyond me why she gets so much hate. But OTOH, looking back, I was quite judgemental about what I considered commercial music when I was younger. But the sexist part of the critique is certainly a thing and it is embarrassing…
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TL;DR
- if you don’t like that style of techno, just listen to other stuff
- if you don’t like long posts, ignore me, can’t help it
Osmium sounds dope and Bryn is such a boss on the keys! Damn!
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Go to better clubs.
Loads of them are banning phones now.
I hardly ever go to raves or parties or gigs where you see a lot of phones, mostly because I don’t really move in those sort of circles and never really have.
Admittedly, it’s a shitty time to run a club or try and promote parties, but this embarrassing nostalgia based nonsense you lot all subscribe to just doesn’t ring true in my experience.
From reading this thread, what I’m getting is mostly the opinions of a bunch of men who aren’t as underground as they think they are having a go at a woman for not being underground enough for them.
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Then we probably danced side by side at one point or another… Partied and played in Ghent quite a bit at that time , and remember everything you mentioned as i’m from Leuven myself 
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Great, what was your dj name? Went to democrazy a lot (Funky green aliens, code 303, needz…) , acec, squatting place near the cathedral, lots of one-time venues… For a couple of years my living room was the dancefloor of io, an afterclub in the city center (after it shut down), we had some great parties there as well. Bombdogs ruined my speakers on new years eve in the morning, fond memories 
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The partying part started halfway through the nineties (at Silo Leuven of course), the DJ-ing started more around the switch of the millennium as my style was too slow and minimal for the looptechno of the 90’s. Did get to surf on the entire minimal thing that followed though. And did so under the name Crisp … played at 10 Days Off, Kozzmozz in Ghent, etc… but never liked those gigs to be honest. I need to be close to the dancefloor to be able to really connect. I always found that being up there , high and mighty above the crowd is lame. So when i became 30 even though i was doing quite well as a dj … i bowed out with a return to my roots. Squatted a basement , invited some friends and we went nuts one more time : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S-Dc7unYo8
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I love it when RA don’t hold back. Their Fred Again review was kinda the same
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A sad cousin of Business Funk
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There’s this interesting contemporary choreographer working with techno, born in Ghent I think and a graduate from Leuven (cultural history / gender studies):
Saw her in Tanzmesse Düsseldorf last year. She talks and writes about dudes with attitudes in gabber and hard tech quite a bit 
Sorry if that’s ot, or maybe it isn’t.
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Ok, i had a (short) listen, these tracks sound like one bar loops - not much change after 6 minutes in.
I dont want to call it “trance” as that is something different to me at least.
Have a listen to Ebony Willis instead: (Also a girl DJ, doing some fine sets, and some productions. ) For me it doesnt matter which gender the performer is - if the taste is good, its good.
I’m having a go at a woman?
Top bit of my post was a reply to you, the rest was a broad swipe at some of the opinions knocking about on here.
I’m just gonna delete that I’m too grumpy at 7am to go online sorry big dogs
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You’re her ghost producer arent you?
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Yeah if it wasn’t AI then it’s exactly the sort of bollocks that AI is perfectly capable of generating… hopefully the one silver lining on the cloud of AI is that this style of prose just falls out of favour.
For the same reason I have always enjoyed reading a review that pulls no punches in being critical… When i was a kid I read melody maker cover to cover and they eviscerated certain releases - even ones I liked. I just came to understand that was ‘their perspective’ (which became easy enough to predict for some things) and arguably there was no real harm in it. People are entitled to their opinions as long as they focus on the music and not the person/artist. And I prefer something strongly opinionated more often than not
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My tracks aren’t that good.
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