Prestigious Techno DJ and producer Amelie Lens marks 5 years of EXHALE with explosive new monitor ’Activate’ and the seventh version of the label’s boundary-pushing compilation collection. EXHALE VA007 follows EXHALE’s large label showcase at ADE 2025.
EXHALE
For 5 years, EXHALE has been on the slicing fringe of underground membership tradition. It has rewritten the rule ebook of future techno, powered by shared love of uncompromising rave tradition. A dynamic, community-driven label, platform, and occasion collection bridges the hole between DIY warehouse tradition and mainstage sonics. EXHALE has grown exponentially from its early seeds on the legendary dancefloor of Labyrinth Membership in Hasselt.
The brainchild of then-resident Amelie Lens, whose expertise for curating unreal line-ups, together with artists reminiscent of Marcel Dettmann, BenKlock, Ellen Allien, Rødhåd, and Kobosil, helped construct the inspiration of the EXHALE ethos. They unearthed uncooked expertise and helped it develop by platforming alongside greater names. Since these early days in 2020, Lens has introduced EXHALE to among the world’s most revered dancefloors, with showcases in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, in addition to colossal stage internet hosting for Awakenings ADE, Creamfields UK, Tomorrowland, and lots of extra.
In simply half a decade, EXHALE’s distinctive model of boundary-pushing, futuristic digital music has marked them out as certainly one of techno’s all-time greats. They carry collectively rising artists with heavyweight worldwide names like nobody else. That is evidenced succinctly on their extremely spectacular VA collection, now on its seventh launch. The compilations are a testomony to the brilliance of Lens’ curatorial talent and the outstanding pool of expertise in her orbit. These parts make waves in techno’s international underground.
EXHALE VA007
Throughout 13 tracks, Exhale VA007 is a powerful taster menu of among the greatest within the sport proper now. It options a number of acquainted faces from the EXHALE roster, together with Flour, recent from his latest Guests EP on the label. It additionally has earlier VA returnees GALLØ and FLKN, and EXHALE common AIROD. Fittingly, fifth birthday celebrations are opened right here by the label boss herself with the unbelievable ‘Activate’. The monitor is every part you possibly can need from Amelie Lens: pummeling kick, flawless, high-impact manufacturing, trancy bigroom arps, and a gargantuan drop that may put you in spin mode.
EXHALE fave, Italian producer Flour, follows with aptly titled ‘Love It’. Replete with driving depth, melodic vocals add distinction to the pounding techno tranceosphere. ‘Like a tune you wanna play on repeat. ’ It’s acquired earworm standing in spades. Subsequent up is Spanish DJ and producer Blondex with ‘Zor’. He delivers the crisp, thumping kicks and darkly pressing synths. ‘Raving til we fall’ is dynamic, trancey, and epic.
Trippy and Trancey
Sizzling on their heels is French artist FLKN with ‘The Gentle’. Right here, laborious techno and a punk sensibility are in. Emotive vocals lead us straight to bop. Right here, we’re met with distorted lazery synths that erupt into behemoth trancey 303s.
Glaswegian producer by way of Berlin, AISHA, delivers trippy euphoria with ‘Capsule Crusher’. It offers notes of ’90s eurodance within the addictive synth horn melody loop. Breathy samples make this recent minimize really feel like arising for air deep within the rave. The primary of two extra returning EXHALE faces, Parisian AIROD, is subsequent dropping some ‘LSD’. With extra trippiness by way of gated vox, pumping depth, bounce, and wonk, these come within the form of revolutionary Scottish producer GALLØ and his monitor ‘Vul Dica’. Forecast? signature pounding rhythms and squelchy acid strains, offset with an emotive lightness of contact courtesy of hauntingly diaphanous synth melodies and vocal loops.
Future Techno Via EXHALEVA007
Rising from Berlin’s underground, rising star Ellen Trenn’s ‘Regulate’ offers us searing pump mode from her cross-genre palette. She fuses robust electrobreak with spades of metallic techno futurism. Younger Palestinian artist from Gaza, Jomaa, makes his debut with the movingly titled ‘Free Hen’. It’s a reflection of the eager for freedom, delivered by driving rhythms, pressing sonics, and the implicit sound of resilience, hope, and humanity. ‘Turning silence into one thing that may be felt world wide’ is a compilation spotlight from this proficient newcomer. It’s all eyes on promising French Techno producer Carla Schmitt together with her monitor ‘Look At Me’. It’s progressive and groovy. Her background as a dancer reveals itself by the monitor’s darkish, sensual vitality and irresistible thump.
For ‘Simply A Buddy’, Canadian Alexa Borzyk offers us a panned synth and dubby detailing. This reveals an virtually underwater really feel as we dive deep into the evening for this pearl of a monitor. The penultimate monitor comes from Dutch DJ and producer VE/RA with ‘No One Else’. She takes us to transcendent locations with relentless rhythms and hovering choir-like vox.
Closing us out is Kurdish artist Lawyn, impressed by the wealthy digital music tradition of his now dwelling, Germany. On ‘Nami’, he delivers a dramatic finale to Exhale VA007 with ‘Tubular Bells’ adjoining melodies, gothic magnificence, and driving depth. That is the proper sign-off for a compilation that brims with uncooked vitality, thrilling expertise, and encapsulates EXHALE’s dynamic techno universe with aplomb. As important because the label itself, right here’s to the subsequent 5 years and lots of extra to come back.
