DJ & Producer · Antwerp, Belgium
Amelie Lens
Amelie Lens went from Antwerp fashion runways to techno's biggest stages, building Lenske and EXHALE into two of the genre's defining platforms.
On September 4, 2026, Amelie Lens released her debut studio album, "AURA," an eleven-track record put out through her own EXHALE imprint. It arrived nearly a decade after she first appeared on Belgian dance floors, and it says something about how far she has traveled that a debut album counts as a career milestone rather than an introduction. By the time "AURA" landed, Lens was already one of techno's most recognizable names, a DJ Mag Top 100 regular, the founder of two record labels, and one of the artists most frequently credited with pulling techno toward faster, harder, more festival-scaled territory over the past several years.
Early Life and Path Into Music
Amelie Lens was born on May 31, 1990, in Vilvoorde, a town in Flemish Brabant just north of Brussels. Her mother died when Lens was young, and she was raised from around age five by her grandmother. She grew up mostly in Antwerp, where she later attended art school and where she remains based today, and her early musical diet ran through alternative rock and industrial-leaning electronic acts, Nine Inch Nails, Underworld, Boys Noize, and Ellen Allien among them. A trip to Belgium's Dour Festival as a young teenager is the moment she has repeatedly pointed to as decisive, the first time the scale and intensity of a festival crowd registered as something she wanted to be part of, not just watch.
Before music became a full-time career, Lens worked as a fashion model, walking runways for Jean Paul Gaultier and appearing in campaigns for H&M, with stints in London, Paris, and Milan. She started DJing on the side, initially performing under the name Renée, her late mother's name, and built a residency at Labyrinth Club in Hasselt starting in 2013, playing a bass-heavy, minimal strain of techno to a small but committed local crowd. By 2014 she had dropped the alias, started releasing and performing under her own name, and left modeling behind to focus on music.
Sound and Style
Lens's productions and sets sit at the harder, more physical end of techno, built around driving kick drums, acid-inflected basslines, and a stripped-back, functional sense of arrangement that favors momentum over ornamentation. It is a sound indebted to the hypnotic minimal techno she cut her teeth on at Labyrinth, filtered through the bigger rooms and festival stages she has since come to headline. Her breakthrough came with "Let It Go," an EP released on September 2, 2016, on Pan-Pot's Second State Audio label, a record that established the acid-and-techno template she has refined ever since. She has been part of a broader shift in the genre that RTS.FM examined in its piece on hard techno's American boom and a scene pushing tempos past 180 BPM, one of a handful of European artists whose rise helped introduce harder, faster techno to festival crowds who had never set foot in a warehouse.
Lenske and the Label Story
In 2018, Lens founded Lenske, a label built initially to house her own productions before opening up as a platform for other artists working in the same hard-edged, acid-leaning corner of techno. Its catalogue includes the 2020 EP "Higher," her third release on the imprint, whose vocal-led title track became a fixture of her live sets and marked a turn toward more emotive, anthemic production without sacrificing the low-end weight her sound is built on. Lenske gave Lens full control over her release schedule and, just as importantly, a way to put newer producers in front of an audience she had spent years building on her own.
EXHALE and Career Highlights
Where Lenske is a label, EXHALE is broader: a record label, radio show, and touring event series that grew out of curated nights Lens hosted back at Labyrinth Club in Hasselt. It has since taken over stages at Awakenings ADE, Creamfields, Extrema Outdoor Belgium, Dour, and fabric in London, and become a release outlet for underground techno producers in its own right, releasing her 2026 debut album "AURA" as its most high-profile record to date. Lens has been a consistent fixture of DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll since debuting on the list, ranking 30th in 2023, her highest position to date, before placing 41st in 2024 and 38th in 2025.
She has also become a regular guest at Pyramid, the Sunday-night residency at Amnesia Ibiza curated by Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, and Nina Kraviz, a booking pattern RTS.FM covered in its piece on Nina Kraviz's Sunday residency at Amnesia Ibiza, where Lens has repeatedly shared the bill across the club's Terrace and Main Room. That kind of overlap with Kraviz, whose own packed year included a new label, a world tour, and the Amnesia residency documented in RTS.FM's recap of Nina Kraviz's 2026, reflects how tightly connected the upper tier of techno's touring circuit has become. Closer to home, Lens's most talked-about 2026 moment outside of "AURA" was "One Mind," her first studio collaboration with fellow Belgian Charlotte de Witte, released alongside a run of sold-out arena shows in Ghent that RTS.FM broke down in Amelie Lens and Charlotte de Witte's One Mind EP, a record that quietly answered years of press narratives casting the two as rivals rather than peers.
Away from the booth, Lens married her partner, producer Sam Deliaert, who performs as Farrago, in the summer of 2022, and the couple had a daughter in December 2023. Nearly two decades on from that first trip to Dour, she has gone from a teenage festivalgoer to one of the artists other festivalgoers now travel to see.
FAQ
Where is Amelie Lens from?
She was born on May 31, 1990, in Vilvoorde, Belgium, and grew up mainly in Antwerp, where she attended art school and where she is still based today.
What is Amelie Lens's breakthrough release?
Her 2016 EP "Let It Go," released on Pan-Pot's Second State Audio label, is widely regarded as the release that established her as a rising force in techno.
What labels does Amelie Lens run?
She founded Lenske in 2018 as an outlet for her own productions and other artists working in a similar acid-leaning techno style, and she also runs EXHALE, a label, radio show, and touring event series that released her 2026 debut album, "AURA."
What is Amelie Lens's highest DJ Mag Top 100 ranking?
She placed 30th in DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll in 2023, her best result to date, having also ranked 41st in 2024 and 38th in 2025.
Did Amelie Lens release an album?
Yes. Her debut studio album, "AURA," came out on September 4, 2026, via her own EXHALE label as an eleven-track record.