TuneLab
Awakenings Festival 2018 Sunday - Liveset Amelie Lens
Area V
Awakenings Festival 2018, Area V: a concrete bunker vibrating at its resonant frequency, packed with us lunatics who think 130 BPM for two hours is a sensible way to spend a Sunday. Amelie Lens’s live set here is a foundational text for the modern hard techno movement, a relentless, physical assault. This is driving, peak-time techno with a hard edge, maintaining a fierce 130.5 BPM average and leveraging the intense, driving energy of the 12A key for almost its entire duration.
The structure is mercilessly linear, a constant build of tension through layered, distorted kicks, screeching hi-hats, and sparse, atmospheric breakdowns that serve only to make the drops hit harder. The tracklist is a arsenal of weapons: Ale Ulli's 'We Control' is a hypnotic, looping mantra, while Hemka's 'Familiar #4' and Argento's 'Red Light' are exercises in brutalist sound design. The inclusion of the Tomorrowland 'Tecno Electronico Mix' and Robbie Rivera's 'The Main Room' shows a keen ear for timeless, peak-time energy, and Joyhauser's 'Galaxy Phase' adds a sci-fi sheen.
It’s a journey that starts in the fog with an unknown banger, escalates into the punishing groove of tracks like 'We Control' and 'Red Light', and finally releases the pressure with the deep, pulsing finale of Steve Valentine's 'Deeper'.