There’s no acknowledged direct connection between George Sand, the pseudonym of French Romantic author Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and Raving George, the alias of a concrete-cratering Belgian techno DJ Charlotte de Witte — but both were motivated to change their names as a way to be heard in the respective male-dominated arts they practice. “Raving George was a name I chose when I was just 16,” she recently explained, shortly after announcing she was dropping the pseudonym to release her Weltschmerz EP, five tracks of punishing chain-linked beats pounding as hard and insistently as the walls of Berlin club Berghain. “I wanted to be a serious DJ and play proper hard, dark, underground techno but at the time I felt like there were a lot of negative stereotypes about female DJs. So when I got my first gig I chose a somewhat ambiguous name to hide behind.”
On Weltschmerz‘s primordial “Damage Control,” flashes of heat sweep through de Witte’s ticking, subterranean pulse like bats through a cave, as she pulls her sinewy layers even tauter with fizzling hi-hats and an almost abrasively repetitive, stalking bass movement. She hangs back just once, filling with — before picking it back up again, in perfect time with your aching feet. Listen here.
Weltschmerz is out December 11 via Tiga’s Turbo Recordings.