Get to know Charlotte de Witte, the Belgian artist crafting dense, dark techno

Charlotte de Witte has never forgotten her first gig. “January 22, 2010,” she recites. “Specific, I know.” The Belgian DJ is currently getting used to playing prestigious venues like Watergate and DC10, but her first outing came in far less salubrious surroundings. “It was a youth club in a small town near Ghent,” she laughs.

“I had never touched a CDJ in my life before I played. My track selection was shit – really bad – and I didn’t know what I was doing. Luckily, it was only a few friends and staff there.”

Although she grew up with a father who worked in the music industry, she tells us his job in sales at EMI meant it was mainly ‘accessible music’ available to her at home: “Compilations of whatever they were selling at the time.” She didn’t discover electronic music for herself until she started exploring the clubs of Ghent at the age of 16. “I went into all these places and found sounds that weren’t mainstream,” she tells us. “It grabbed my attention, and I fell in love with the underground.”