MELTX On Cinematic Storytelling, Hard Techno And Building A World Beyond The Booth
- Undrtone Blog
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
MELTX does not approach electronic music like a typical club artist. Every set, release and visual feels tied to something larger, shaped as much by film, emotion and narrative as it is by BPM or genre. Long before becoming one of Ireland’s fastest rising names within hard techno and hardcore, Melanie was already immersed in performance, storytelling and visual art through musical theatre and award-winning filmmaking.
That background still sits at the centre of everything she creates now.
“Musical theatre taught me that performance is about making people feel something, not just entertaining them for an hour,” she explains. “I grew up obsessed with storytelling, emotion, tension and drama, and all of those things naturally carried over into my music.”
Even when building DJ sets today, she still thinks less like a traditional selector and more like a director constructing scenes and emotional arcs.
“I want people to leave feeling like they experienced something cinematic and intense,” she says. “Almost like they stepped inside another world for a few hours.”
Before fully committing to music, MELTX had already established herself creatively through filmmaking. Her short films ‘Catharsis’ and ‘Silent’ gained major recognition, with ‘Silent’ connecting globally through its focus on mental health and emotional isolation.
Film initially offered the perfect creative outlet because of how many disciplines it combined at once.
“Film was my first love creatively because it combines emotion, visuals, music, psychology and storytelling all at once,” she explains.
But eventually, music began offering something cinema could not.
“With film, you can spend years creating something before anyone sees it,” she says. “With DJing and producing, you feel the reaction instantly. There’s this raw exchange of energy that’s addictive.”
That shift became even clearer once she began playing harder, more emotionally charged sets and seeing how audiences responded in real time.
“I realised I could create the same emotional impact I loved in cinema, but with thousands of people experiencing it together.”
That cinematic mindset now shapes almost every part of the MELTX universe. Her sets are built intentionally, often structured more like psychological thrillers than straightforward club performances.
“There’s an introduction where you establish atmosphere, tension-building moments, emotional peaks, chaos and release,” she explains.
The contrasts inside those moments are deliberate too.
“I love taking people from something euphoric and nostalgic into something dark and aggressive within seconds,” she says. “It creates this emotional whiplash that keeps people fully locked in.”
Visually and sonically, she pulls inspiration from cyberpunk aesthetics, horror sound design, Y2K nostalgia and hyper-feminine imagery, all feeding into a project that feels increasingly immersive beyond just the music itself.
“I want my sets to feel immersive,” she explains. “Almost like people are inside a dream, a meltdown or a movie scene rather than just standing in a club.”
That emotional intensity also links closely back to the themes explored in ‘Silent’. While hard techno and hardcore naturally lean towards physical release and adrenaline, MELTX still sees emotional honesty as one of the most important foundations underneath everything she makes.
“I think people can tell when art comes from a real emotional place,” she says. “Even though techno is high-energy and intense, I’m always chasing emotion underneath it.”
That tension between beauty and destruction feels central to her sound.
“I’m drawn to tracks that feel nostalgic, euphoric, destructive, beautiful or slightly heartbreaking at the same time.”
For MELTX, the appeal of harder electronic music often comes from exactly that emotional release.
“I think a lot of people come to harder music because they want somewhere to put all their emotions, anxiety, frustration or energy,” she says. “When you’re in a dark room surrounded by thousands of people all moving together to something intense, it becomes almost cathartic.”
As her profile has grown through releases on labels including HEKATE, Taapion, NOW NOW and 999999999, she has become increasingly comfortable leaning fully into her own identity rather than trying to fit cleanly inside one genre lane.
“My sound naturally sits between hard techno, hardcore, cinematic sound design and emotional storytelling,” she explains. “I’ve stopped trying to dilute that.”
That clarity around identity seems to have accelerated the project internationally too. While the rise itself has felt gradual from her perspective, there were definite moments where the momentum suddenly became impossible to ignore.
“One big shift was seeing clips from my sets start spreading online internationally,” she says. “Suddenly promoters from places I’d never even visited were reaching out.”
More importantly though, audiences started connecting with the wider world she was building rather than isolated tracks alone.
“People weren’t just connecting to individual tracks,” she explains. “They were connecting to the whole MELTX world and energy.”
Now preparing for shows across Italy, India, Tenerife and Los Angeles, she approaches each performance differently depending on the environment while still keeping the emotional core of the project intact.
“Some crowds want something darker and more hypnotic,” she says. “Others want pure chaos and high energy from the start.”
That unpredictability remains one of the biggest things she loves about touring.
“I never want performances to feel copy-and-paste,” she explains. “Whether I’m playing in Europe, India or LA, I still want people to feel transported into the MELTX universe for that moment.”
As a woman operating within the harder edges of electronic music, MELTX also acknowledges the additional scrutiny female artists can often face in those spaces.
“There can still be assumptions made about female artists before people even hear the music,” she says.
Rather than responding to that directly though, her focus has remained on building something creatively undeniable.
“I never wanted to rely on trends or shock value alone,” she explains. “I wanted people to remember the sets, the atmosphere and the emotional impact.”
Looking ahead, it is clear MELTX sees the project evolving far beyond the boundaries of a standard DJ career.
“I want MELTX to feel bigger than just a DJ project,” she says. “It’s a full creative world. Music, visuals, emotion, fashion, cinema, nostalgia, chaos, femininity and vulnerability all colliding together.”
Ultimately, the goal is not simply to entertain people for an hour in a dark room.
“I want people to remember a MELTX set the way they remember a scene from a film or a moment from a dream.”
