It’s going to take me ten more years to prove myself, but I’m going to do it.”Īmelie Lens plays just once a year in her home town, Antwerp, and like every other gig she’s played in the past 18 months, this one is sold out. “It just happened so fast – too fast,” Lens says. Older DJs grew up in a different time, whereas she had fans in countries she hadn’t even visited yet, thanks to social media. The criticism, that somehow her success is ‘unreal’ or ‘unearned’, cuts her deeply – particularly when it comes from those she looks up to – but she gets it. “I think I read somewhere that I’m the loved and most hated DJ ever,” she says, “And I thought, ‘It’s true, I am’.” It’s as though they actually know me.” For every action, though, there is a reaction, and not everyone is happy with Amelie Lens’ meteoric rise over the past two years.

“It’s unbelievable really,” she says, “especially as most of the things people do or give are things that I really like. And, especially, they bring gifts to her shows: from bunches of sunflowers to local football shirts with ‘Amelie’ on the back (she has 10 so far), a pillow in Serbia, a big flag with ‘you are always welcome in our country’ on it in Uruguay, artwork by the score, from drawings to a hand-painted jacket with her picture on the back to a painting of her cats (she couldn’t cart the frame around South America so she cut the canvas out and has it proudly displayed on the wall at home), toys for her cats (in Belfast), a ring with a cat on it, “really touching letters” and a whole lot more. On social media her every post, video and pic is met with rapture. They crowd into her raucous, sell-out gigs, where she unloads her all-enveloping techno with the skill and sheer emotional engagement of a genuine lover of the genre. Amelie Lens’ fans like to show their love.

Amelie lens berlin