Helena Hauff’s brilliance has always been an ability to absorb influences but to untether them from period, to draw everything together into a timeless dark, dirty, sweaty dancefloor moment — inspired by her time as resident at Hamburg’s beloved/notorious small techno dive Golden Pudel. Her dark, sharp-edged hardware jams sound like Kraftwerk, like eighties Belgian new beat, like Drexciya and Underground Resistance, like any number of obscure warehouse techno/electro producers of the past 30 years. But unless you actively want to trainspot — to note that this clap pattern or that buzzing arpeggiated bass or the other rippling lead melody remind you of a specific track — what you hear when you put on her 2015 debut album isn’t the past, it’s the pleasure principle. Yes, pleasure: this may sound dark, cold or even gothy on first listen — but these sounds have been tried and proved over decades to set your synapses alight with delight. This was, and remains, the sound of now as much as of the decades gone before.