Helena Hauff
Discreet Desires

Ninja Tune / Werkdiscs

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$39.00 SGD
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About

A TAV Curator’s Pick.

Helena Hauff released her debut solo album via Ninja Tune/ Werkdiscs in September 2015. Titled Discreet Desires, it’s the most in depth summation of the Golden Pudel resident DJ’s improvised one-take machine-funk to date.

Making her recording debut just two years ago in 2013, Helena’s first release was a 3-track EP – Actio Reactio - on Actress’ Werkdiscs imprint. She has since partnered with PAN (as Black Sites alongside F#x), Lux Rec, Bunker sublabel Panzerkreuz and Texan cassette imprint Handmade Birds to share her overtly analogue excursions into techno’s shadowy fringes, improvised and recorded in her bedroom studio in Hamburg. Fully embracing her love of hardware, Helena joined James Dean Brown’s legendary electronic improv outfit Hypnobeat (founded back in 1983) in 2013, blazing a trail across Europe with their intense polyrhythmic jam sessions on the TB-303, TR-707 and TR-808.

“I have the feeling it’s more one-to-one – you do something and then the machine reacts. The machine has its own mind too, so it gives something back.”

Ten tracks deep, Discreet Desires is the embodiment of Helena’s deep-seated beliefs about music as a radical force and unifying movement. Something that is evident from her growing stature as a selector and her enthusiasm for musical subcultures from punk to nu wave, industrial, krautrock and avant garde electro – all of which were rooted in raw experimentation and existed in polar opposition to the perfect, polished mainstream.

“Perfection is pretty boring. It doesn’t really exist anyway… only in death. Death is perfect.” – Ninja Tune

"Since 2013, German producer Helena Hauff has been releasing dark acid techno-influenced slabs of music, that work as well for home consumption as they do on the dancefloor. Hauff’s output has always been as atmospheric as it is cinematic. This has set her apart from her peers, and has made her a welcome addition to any line up and record collection around the world...Effectively Discreet Desires is a classic electro album, with techno leanings. It all sounds authentically retro and filthy. It’s almost like Dave Clark found some unreleased Adonis tracks and reedited them in 1996. A surprising element to the album is how melodious it is. The melodies are polymerous, and Hauff’s deft technical flourishes mean that different instruments merge in and out of each other to create ever changing, but constant patterns." - Drowned In Sound

"Helena Hauff's appeal is obvious. She comes from Hamburg's Golden Pudel, a 200-capacity punk venue repurposed as a dance club, where perfect mixing seems beside the point. (For a while, the place only had one turntable.) Hauff channels that kind of slapdash personality into her DJ sets, which mix up industrial, EBM, post-punk and, primarily, the West Coast Hague sound. The same energy pervades her own productions, acidic hardware workouts with an aversion to computers. It's a classic approach that hearkens back to the original Chicago machine jams, but Hauff makes it her own, channeling idiosyncratic tastes through tried-and-true Roland gear. On Discreet Desires, Hauff's first proper full-length, her dynamic subtlety and deft songwriting place it a notch above the pack." - Resident Advisor

 

Watch the video for 'Sworn To Secrecy Part II':

 

 

Item description:        

Artist:

Helena Hauff

Title:

Discreet Desires

Label:

Ninja Tune / Werkdiscs

Format:

2 × Vinyl, LP, 33 ⅓ RPM, Album

Pressing:

UK

Release Date:

2015

Genre:

Electronica

Style:

Techno, Synth-pop, Electro, EBM (Electronic Body Music)

Catalog No:

WDNT014

Condition:

New