Titus writes:
I seem to remember saying some time ago that I enjoy techno music. I love the sheer energy and skill of producing it. There are many, many DJs but Charlotte de Witte, I would definitely say is “at the top of her game” as far as DJing goes. She is a 32 year old Belgian DJ and record producer, best known for her dark and stripped back brand of acid-techno. She is also the founder of the music labels KNTXT and Époque. First though a little history plus the evolution of the DJ. He or she used to play a selection of vinyl records on a turntable, at entertainment venues and over the radio. This inevitably progressed via cassettes and CDs to today’s modern digital computer technology, and DJing software like Serato & Traktor are in common use. The DJ became involved in mixing and remixing tracks, using equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. In most cases modern DJs have become so involved that they can now appear in their own right at venues – the likes of Charlotte, Deborah de Luca, Carl Cox, David Guetta, Amelie Lens regularly pack thousands of adoring, dancing fans into their gigs which usually last much longer say than the average band performance. Festivals like Ultra Miami, Lollapalooza, Coachella and Tomorrowlands are hugely popular to live audiences and to video platforms like You Tube.
Well that’s a brief history, and possibly the only time in my own life that I wish I had been born LATER in the twentieth century, was when I heard that Charlotte de Witte around 2009 had started to explore Ghent’s underground night scene and found herself totally obsessed with electronic and techno music. Wow! Perhaps a little scary but what a career path to take. I have another amazing fact to tell you about now, and you won’t be surprised to know that “Not a lot of people know that”........ De Witte, when breaking into DJing, called herself Raving George to try and avoid prejudice against female DJs, and released her debut EP in 2013 under that name.
A couple of years later, she dispensed with the alias of Raving George and started using her real name. Apparently she recalls a set played by by German DJ Len Faki, at a festival and adopted his style to a style similar to her current one. She later released an EP called ‘Weltschmerz’ on Turbo Recordings. In 2017 / 18, de Witte released seven EP’s, and performed at such notable electronic music events as the London Printworks, Boiler Room, and Junction 2 Festival. Just before the end of the decade, she launched her own record label KNTXT, and well known musicians like Chris Liebing and Monoloc released music on that label. In that year of 2019, she gained the prestigious DJ Awards ‘Best Techno DJ’ accolade, and since then, following further successes, has advanced to becoming true to her nickname ‘Techno Queen’.
I rarely touch on personal lives, but it is a fact that in 2021, Charlotte became engaged to another techno DJ, Enrico Sangiuliano who hails from Italy. The pair released their iconic remixed version of 1990’s Belgian tune ‘The Age of Love’, which became hugely popular, gaining Gold Record status. The couple married in 2022. The biggest problem I’ve had in respect of finding a track for Lex to play is the sheer length of most of Charlotte’s recorded work, but if Lex doesn’t mind, this selection is a radio edit, just over four and a half minutes’ long. It is the track just referred to and this remix was recorded live at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami in 2023. Being an edited remix, it ends rather abruptly, so may require our DJ to demonstrate his tech skills in ‘fading’ the track. If you ever get the chance to see Charlotte de Witte – please take it – there really is no DJ to match her on the planet IMO, and she really is the Queen of Techno. ‘The Age of Love’ can be found here.