Hauff, Helena – “Discreet Desires” – [Werkdiscs]

Kai Sync   4/20/2016   A Library, CD

Helena Hauff is an electro revivalist techno DJ, her background being DJ at Hamburg’s Golden Pudel (a punk venue repurposed as a dance club.) Discreet Desires is her first full-length album. She’s a die-hard hardware only sequencer producer so most of the tracks are machines put into motion with murky, dark, cinematic and opaque sequenced soundscape jams. There are traces of lo-fi electro, stiff and slap-dash acidic-techno , and even John Carpenter style sequencer film dramatization. The West Coast Hague sound is also present (post-punk meets raw techno.) When this all does not work is when she let’s the machines loose and they take over their destination. When the album works is when unexpected elements brought forward by a human curries the music. The melodious songwriting parts also surprise in this age of more industrial techno being the norm.