News

Charlotte De Witte Maintains Elite Techno Status with Unrelenting New EP

October 17, 2022

Charlotte de Witte releases her second EP of the year, ‘Apollo,’ while seamlessly negotiating a packed touring schedule.

Belgian techno matriarch Charlotte de Witte is back on the scene with new material, though it’s safe to say she never left. Amid a busy touring schedule and the release of ‘Universal Consciousness’ earlier this year, she has now offered fans the four-part ‘Apollo’ EP. Released on her own KNTXT label, this brief yet captivating collection of throbbing club joints is well in tune with her unmistakable dark vibrancy.

The new record is lyric-free for the most part, except it opens with a voiceover of sorts that sets the tone for the twenty-plus minutes ahead. Early in the first song, a woman says the following in a monotone: “At the edge of infinity, there’s a spirit that dwells deep within my soul — a spirit that possesses the entity beyond all self-existence. This is the missing channel, deep within my soul.” The beat then kicks in with the words “deep within my soul” echoing over the remainder of the expanding track, and this encapsulates the reflective nature of de Witte’s work. It is designed to engage you physically while mentally pulling you away into an elevated zone. The second and third tracks follow a similar pattern as the first — lengthy, eerie yet uplifting — while the closer is more of an atmospheric experiment that quite successfully grounds listeners after the journey they have just been on.

This is the Missing Channel 👽 @KNTXTmusic pic.twitter.com/YbqagvU9St
— Charlotte de Witte (@CharlottedWitte) October 14, 2022

“The vastness and solitude of space always interested me. A compelling contrast between monumental power and the vacuum in between,” Charlotte said about her latest release. “This diversion can also be found in techno music, a pure simplicity divergent in power.”

After putting out her first EP of the year in April, she has been touring extensively and stirring up crowds to make up for all the time lost during the coronavirus pandemic. She’s now fully back in business, with performances scheduled for Creamfields Chile, Beyond the Valley Australia, and Amsterdam Dance Event, the last of which will involve her leading a KNTXT label takeover of the city’s Ziggo Dome. She will subsequently cross the pond to South America for KNTXT showcases in Buenos Aires and São Paulo.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjno9U-vRKK/

Charlotte de Witte precedes her reputation and is now prized globally for the trance-inducing framework within which she operates. With chart-topping releases and the bragging rights of being the first techno and female DJ to headline the main stage at Tomorrowland, she has cemented her legacy in the electronic music space … and she’s still in the early stages of her career!

Tags:

author

Karan Singh

I am an Indian American music journalist based in Los Angeles. My interests include (but aren't limited to) downtempo, industrial, drum & bass and trip hop. After working in the publishing industry as a copy editor for nearly three years, I decided to switch professions and become a writer. I have a bachelor's degree in English from UC Santa Cruz and a master's degree in Specialized Journalism from the University of Southern California. My aim as a writer is to explore the forces that energize creativity. I've always felt a natural pull toward the arts and entertainment space, and my stories seek to magnify the facets of its adjoining cultures.