Content warning: This article contains discussion of pregnancy loss and sexual harassment.

It’s 8pm at Magazine Open—Air, and the last of the daylight is slipping below the London skyline, casting the venue’s great industrial structures into dark shapes above the crowd. Hard, driving techno hurtles from the sound system as Amelie Lens and Sara Landry trade tracks in a headline b2b set; huge kicks and heavy bass set 8,000 bodies into motion. In the DJ booth though, things sound a little different. The pair are mixing in their headphones, the monitors turned down low. Lens is six months pregnant.

It’s one of a number of ways the Belgian techno artist has had to adapt her working life during pregnancy, most of which are invisible from the dancefloor. And there’s a lot to keep moving. Over the past 12 years, Lens has become one of the most recognisable artists in global techno, moving from her local club scene to the biggest stages in the world without ever really stepping off the gas. Since her last DJ Mag cover, the pace hasn’t slowed: she’s still jetting between continents, scaling her renowned EXHALE label and events brand, and has just released her long-awaited debut album, ‘AURA’. Pregnancy hasn’t put the brakes on any of it; it’s just meant making a few adjustments along the way.

Lens has been here before. When she was pregnant with first daughter Kiki in 2023, she toured up until two months before her due date. “I think sometimes you feel like you have to pick one or the other. But I was lucky enough to not have to,” Lens tells DJ Mag a couple of days after the show in London. She’s back home in her Antwerp studio, draped in a baggy, black ‘AURA’-branded t-shirt, and reflecting on the latest chapter in her life and career with a frankness softened by genuine warmth. “With my first pregnancy, I think many people assumed, ‘Oh, she’s going to be taking a step back’. I remember even someone I used to work with being like, ‘Maybe you’re going to want to focus more on motherhood and step away from music for a while’, and I was like, ‘What? No... Why would I do that?’

“Of course, you don’t know how you’re going to feel during pregnancy and after you give birth, but for me, I just became crazy ambitious,” she continues. “I want to be an example to my daughters and show them that they can have it all, too. I didn’t give up my dreams to have them — I took them with me. Kiki was by my side on the main stage at Tomorrowland Winter, and I was eight months pregnant with her when I played to 15,000 people at the Ziggo Dome.”

“I don’t know if there are many jobs that are totally flexible around these things, but I think ours would be the very last one because there are not even children allowed. The two worlds are so far away from each other, and I think that’s OK — but what is not OK is not even thinking about us.”

The decision to keep working was the easy part, Lens says. The harder part has been navigating an industry that isn’t designed even remotely with pregnancy or parenthood in mind. With so few high-profile examples of pregnancy in the techno scene, she found herself having to “really educate a lot of people” along the way. “Which is crazy because it’s such a normal thing. We all came from someone’s belly!

“Many people still feel like pregnant women should be on the sofa, not working,” she continues. “It’s definitely a cultural thing that I’ve experienced while touring. Some places really want to protect pregnant women and expect you to be in bed. So when they see me on stage, they’re like...” She mimes being shocked and horrified. “It is difficult to get all these opinions from everybody on your pregnancy when I’m very educated on all the decisions I am making. I think I saw six different doctors just to be sure.

“We did so much research before I got pregnant with Kiki, and also I don’t think people know how much I adapt,” she continues. “They see me on the stage and assume I’m standing in front of the bass, which obviously I’m not. The bass is off. The volume is low. I have a decibel meter with me at all times. People don’t know any of this. They just see a video and are like, ‘Your baby is gonna be deaf’.”

A lot of the education has been practical. Lens knew early on that she was pregnant this time around, and immediately went through her touring calendar with her team, moving shows and adjusting everything from flight schedules and set times to sound levels. But getting basic accommodations taken seriously on the road has been an uphill battle — whether it’s fighting for a set-time change to get enough sleep, trying to get venues to respect her contractually required DJ booth height so she isn’t forced to hunch over with her belly, or walking into dressing rooms filled with people smoking and having nowhere to sit before her set.

They’re basic things, but they highlight how little the scene is set up to accommodate pregnancy. “I don’t know if there are many jobs that are totally flexible around these things, but I think ours would be the very last one because there are not even children allowed,” Lens continues. “The two worlds are so far away from each other, and I think that’s OK — but what is not OK is not even thinking about us.”

And while she has the team and profile to push for changes, she knows that not every artist would have the same leverage. “I think because of where I am now in my career and also my reach on social media, I am treated better. Also I’ve really noticed a difference between five or 10 years ago and now. It’s insane. As an upcoming artist, being pregnant must be so much harder. A lot of people just don’t seem to really care.”

For Lens, that care can be as straightforward as a venue remembering to swap out her usual rider for the pregnancy version, with “coconut water, cashew nuts, bananas” instead of “vodka and champagne”. “When I get backstage and my correct rider is there, I’m like, ‘Oh, great, they read my requests, they’re ready. It’s all gonna