The Belgian techno powerhouse opens up about motherhood, protecting EXHALE’s sense of community and the 12-year journey behind her debut album, ‘AURA.’
The eleven-track album merges the grand with the intimate, the cinematic with the raw. She takes her listeners back in time to when she was a fresh-faced clubber in Antwerp, neck-deep in the dance floor, besotted with the culture.
“Being in the nightclubs gave me this feeling of belonging somewhere, I felt connection and freedom I had never experienced before,” she says. “That feeling changed my life completely.”
It’s something she’s recreating with this album, taking us from tiny local clubs to gargantuan festival stages. The intro is so cinematic it could soundtrack a Christopher Nolan film. It’s followed by “our frequency”, with escalating arpeggios, hair-raising builds and ecstatic drops, best served with strobe lights and pyrotechnics. It’s an air-tight summary of Amelie’s technical and pacing abilities. She pulls back, holds, then pummels like no one else.
“In general, techno really grew,” she says. “All my shows, including EXHALE, were just growing so fast to a point where we’re scaling back the EXHALE shows while my own shows and AURA keep growing.”
Already wildly popular pre-COVID, Amelie’s brand of techno exploded once lockdown lifted. Young people, pent up from two years of lockdown, unleashed their energy on warehouse dance floors, fist-pumping to a minimum BPM of 145.
In October 2024, EXHALE and Awakenings took over Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, a 12,000 capacity arena that’s hosted Adele, Beyoncé, U2 and Madonna.
“I remember being so proud and happy that we sold out,” Amelie says. “We were celebrating, it was amazing. But then we went to the back of the crowd and were standing there, like, wow, it’s actually really, really big.”
Amelie’s always had an extremely loyal fanbase, many of whom travel around the world to attend her shows. “People travel and meet each other at the event, and I was like, how can they even find each other here?” Amelie says. “I feel like the point of community, which is so important, got a little bit lost. So although that show was insane, and a highlight for all of us, we actually decided this is getting too big.”
So in a world where bigger is always better, Amelie’s gone the other way. “I’m still a raver at heart,” she says. “I like my clubs. I like this intimate vibe.”
Now, you’re more likely to catch an EXHALE showcase at fabric in London, Sugarfactory in Amsterdam or RSO in Berlin.
On the other hand, Amelie’s AURA production is built for arenas. Her immersive audiovisual live show and visual concept combines Amelie’s sledgehammer techno with cutting-edge lighting, custom laser displays, shadows, and brutalist architectural design.
Here, Amelie ascends the DJ booth into a more immersive, high-risk realm. She doesn’t arrive armed with just a USB. Instead, she has an entire production crew complete with creative direction, motion artists, lighting designers, programmers, technical production and touring crew.
“So all the pressure is on me,” Amelie says. “If something goes wrong, it’s my fault, not the fault of the festival. It’s my lights, my production, my visuals. Sometimes I wonder ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I not just sticking to DJ sets?’ But when everything goes well and is so aligned, it’s worth it.”
On September 5 2026, EXHALE and AURA will unite in a huge, sold-out open-air hometown show at Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts. The occasion is a special one: it’s the official launch party for Amelie’s debut album, AURA – dropping Friday, September 4 via EXHALE Records.
“My vision for this album was to show all aspects of myself,” Amelie says. “The album was definitely not made to be for the charts. I don’t want one big track taking it over. I want it to stay as one package.”
“4am at RSO” stands out as a love letter to Berlin nightlife and endless weekends in its subterranean warrens, hypnotised by hard, fast, industrial techno.
The only collaboration on the album comes from fellow Belgian powerhouse Angèle. Meeting at the intersection of peak-time techno and contemporary pop, “run” combines Angèle’s ethereal vocals with Amelie’s driving, 4:4 textures. If one of the tracks on this album were to hit the charts, this would be it.
The album ends with “whatever you do,” another vocal-infused techno slammer, showcasing Amelie’s fun, vibrant side and ending on a high note.
Amelie was so determined to follow her instincts, she didn’t share the album with anyone until she’d finished it. She didn’t want anyone’s opinions to influence her, wanting the album to be a pure and untouched creative body of work designed to be consumed in one go, in the correct order.
I mention a recent study by National Rail – it found that 41% of adults haven’t listened to a full album in the past year, while 8% say they have never listened to one in full. I ask Amelie what she thinks about that.
“Please guys,” she laughs. “Please listen. I put so much work into it.”
If there’s one artist that can influence people, it is Amelie Lens. In the six years since we last spoke she took over an issue of Vogue Netherlands, one of very few DJs to make that crossover. She spent a year with their journalists, letting them into her home for a shoot, inviting them on tour, and curating a music-focused magazine that uplifted new artists and candidly shared the realities of being a female touring techno artist.
She was one of the first major DJs to proudly play with her baby bump on show back in 2023. And she’s been open about her miscarriages and the lack of infrastructure in dance music to support women through these kinds of devastating events.
Vogue magazine dove into these experiences. “Just being a woman in a very, very male dominated scene and going through pregnancy and miscarriages twice,” Amelie says. “I felt really lonely. Just the toilets show they really don’t care about women. These horrible DIXI [outdoor, portable] toilets with no hand wash, while I was at big risk of infection. So this was very, very important for me to speak about.”
In recent years, Amelie’s become notably louder, utilising her voice and influence in dance music to highlight issues close to her heart. When allegations of sexual assault emerged against several techno artists in March 2026, she released a statement.
“We are tired,” she wrote. “The dance floor is our home and the backstage is our workplace, but neither feels safe for us.”
Amelie says that becoming a mother to a baby girl in December 2023 made her realise she needs to fight for a better world for her daughter.
“[Motherhood] really, really changed me a lot as a person,” Amelie says. “It changed my whole life, all my priorities. I become so self-aware, because I’m constantly thinking, how is my daughter gonna see me? What is my daughter gonna think? This makes me more ambitious.”
Amelie, who is now pregnant with her second daughter, says she never quite felt ready to share an album. “You cannot plan creativity,” she says. Plus, she needed those years of experience to fully live the story she wanted to tell.
It’s only now, after 12 years of touring the world, building multiple business empires and kicking down doors for women in dance music and beyond, that she’s finally ready to share her journey with the world.