Max HeyraudHard techno is being forced to confront the darker side of its culture in the wake of allegations of abuse and misconduct.
Last week, an Instagram account run by a former employee of a prominent hard techno management agency shared allegations concerning several figures within the scene. The claims, which include assertions of serious misconduct, remain unproven, and no formal findings have been made at the time of publication. Their circulation has nonetheless prompted wider discussion about power dynamics and accountability within the genre.
How did we get here? Where did this current iteration of hard techno come from? And why are so many of its key figureheads, notably from France, so central to its global rise?
Without delving too deeply into the genre’s early roots, hard techno was pioneered by artists such as Chris Liebing, Miss DJAX, and DJ Rush in the 1990s and early 2000s. Its current commercially dominant form, however, can be traced to several more recent catalysts.
One is Boiler Room, which introduced a Hard Dance subsection in the early 2020s. The HARD DANCE banner began appearing at events and later developed into a podcast series, helping to formalise and market a faster, more aggressive strain of techno to a global online audience. Another major force is Verknipt in the Netherlands, operating since 2012 and instrumental in pushing the sound into the mainstream through increasingly large-scale events, some of which have reportedly removed artists who are currently the subject of allegations from upcoming line-ups.
In France, the Parisian techno collective Possession, founded by Anne-Claire and later featuring Mathilda and resident DJ Parfait, played a significant role. Established in 2015 as a protest movement aimed at creating safe, queer and libertarian techno spaces in Paris, Possession became a powerful cultural force before dissolving in 2022 after its final festival, which drew criticism. Online discussions at the time referenced alleged incidents of sexual harassment at events, though these claims were never formally adjudicated.
Does Possession bear responsibility for the current wave of allegations and scrutiny facing hard techno? In essence, no. While there were professional overlaps between members of the collective and some figures now facing allegations, such associations do not imply wrongdoing. What they do illustrate is how this distinctly French-influenced strain of hard techno consolidated its aesthetic and influence over time.
That aesthetic matters. The music grew increasingly aggressive, faster BPMs, distorted kicks, maximalist drops, and so too did the performance style: air-punching, chest-thumping, hyper-masculine posturing behind the decks. The scene has become heavily male-dominated, and the culture around it often mirrors a broader contemporary vision of masculinity rooted in dominance, spectacle and power, a worldview amplified online by figures such as Andrew Tate and adjacent corners of reactionary internet culture.
In April last year, Resident Advisor published a sharply critical piece by Holly Dicker titled “Where Next for the Hard Movement?”, reviewing a stadium-scale Verknipt rave billed as the “world’s biggest hard techno rave.” One line stood out: “Hard techno remains a boys’ club.” That observation feels newly resonant in light of recent events.
This moment has little to do with the music itself, though critics have long debated its artistic merits, and more to do with the culture that has flourished around it. Hard techno, in its current mainstream form, has often felt like the apotheosis of “bro culture” within club spaces: muscular, conventionally attractive men marketed as larger-than-life figures, performing aggression as spectacle. The stage becomes a site of domination, the crowd an arena, the DJ a kind of alpha archetype.
Some of hard techno’s most visible female artists have spoken publicly amid the controversy, dubbed by some online as “Hard Techno Gate.” Cera Khin addressed the moment directly, writing that “the silence around what’s currently being discussed in our scene feels heavy to me,” adding that “sexual abuse and harassment have no place in our community.” Jazzy also shared a statement via Instagram Stories, indicating that she had personally been affected by the alleged abuse of one of the artists currently under scrutiny.
Beyond the specific accusations, the larger issue now revolves around power: how did certain figures amass such influence while, as some claim, problematic behaviour went unchallenged?
Given the broader cultural shifts within club spaces in recent years, this scrutiny feels especially significant. More and more dance floors are marketing themselves as “safe spaces.” Festivals and promoters have publicly pledged to address economic disparities and close gender gaps on line-ups. Discussions about accountability, consent and inclusivity are more prevalent than before. At the same time, a hyper-masculine strain of hard techno was gaining commercial traction.
We are living in a moment where allegations of misconduct by powerful men often generate intense public debate about accountability. In the United States, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. In the United Kingdom, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has faced sustained scrutiny over his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Such cases have fuelled broader conversations about how institutions respond when those at the top are accused of wrongdoing.
The significance of this moment lies less in any individual case, all of which remain legally unresolved, and more in the systems that can allow power, image and influence to eclipse accountability. Hard techno is not unique in this regard. It reflects a recurring pattern seen across industries whenever influence outpaces oversight.
If the allegations prove true, then what we are witnessing would represent not only individual misconduct but also the consequences of a culture that valorised dominance and spectacle without sufficient checks. And even if legal outcomes remain uncertain, the questions now being asked about gatekeeping, gender imbalance, complicity and silence are unlikely to disappear.
