Sexual misconduct, accountability and the “neorave” reckoning
For years, electronic music has presented the dancefloor as something close to sacred ground. It is where we leave our daily lives behind, where strangers become a crowd, and where freedom, respect and unity are supposed to matter more than whatever status we hold outside those walls.
But freedom without safety is a lie.
Over the past months, the so called “neorave” scene has been shaken by an extraordinary wave of allegations involving some of its most visible artists and organisations. Careers have stalled, festival appearances have disappeared, an agency’s roster has collapsed and people who had remained silent for years have begun speaking.
Some cases have now entered the legal system. Others remain accusations circulating through social media. One artist won a defamation judgment at first instance, which the other party has announced she will appeal. Another is now named in a criminal complaint but has not been publicly charged.
Yet separating allegations from convictions cannot become an excuse to avoid the larger question.
How did a scene that sells rebellion, freedom and collective release create relationships in which fans, women, workers and aspiring artists felt unable to speak? Why did so many organisations only begin acting after the screenshots became public and cancellations had already started?
The music is not responsible for any of this. But the structures built around it are not innocent merely because the kick keeps playing.
Before going any further…
I need to make something absolutely clear: this article is not a court judgment, and I am not interested in presenting public allegations as proven facts. A criminal complaint or a civil settlement are not a convictions. A festival cancelling an artist is not a conviction. In the same way, the absence of a conviction does not necessarily mean that an allegation was investigated and proven false.
These distinctions matter. Words matter because there are real people on every side of this story. There are people who were harmed and already face enormous difficulty being heard. There are also people whose names and careers can be permanently destroyed by allegations that may never be properly examined.
Taking allegations seriously and maintaining standards of evidence are not contradictory positions. We need to be able to do both.
The screenshots that broke the scene
The immediate crisis began in February, when the Instagram account @bradnolimit started publishing screenshots, private messages and testimonies involving several prominent names from the “neorave” circuit.
The person behind the account had previously worked with STEER Management, the Paris-based agency representing several of the artists involved. He openly admitted that his decision to begin publishing material came partly from anger and a dispute with former associates.
That immediately complicated the story.
Some people dismissed everything because of his motives. Others accepted every screenshot as unquestionable evidence. Neither position makes much sense.
A person can act from revenge and still reveal true information. A screenshot can be authentic while still being incomplete. A private message can demonstrate awful behaviour without proving a criminal offence. An anonymous testimony can be sincere while remaining impossible for the public to verify.
The posts nevertheless caused an immediate earthquake. STEER first announced that it would examine the material and then suspended its collaboration with the implicated artists. Other artists left the agency, and within days its roster had effectively disintegrated. Promoters across Europe and beyond began removing Shlømo, Basswell, CARV and Odymel from their lineups.
Shortly after, what began as one otherwise relatively anonymous Instagram account quickly became something much larger: METOODJS, a support network that later formalised itself as a French non-profit organisation, reported receiving around 300 testimonies from across electronic music. Those are not 300 proven offences, nor are they 300 allegations against the same five DJ’s. But the number shows that the public controversy opened a door that many people had apparently been waiting to walk through.
This is where the subject stops being just another social-media scandal.
Even if some claims turn out to be false, exaggerated or legally impossible to prove, hundreds of people contacting a support organisation tell us something is deeply wrong with the environment itself.
Six names, six very different situations
One of the biggest problems with the public conversation is that every name has been thrown into the same pile. That is unfair both to the people making allegations and to the people accused. The cases are not interchangeable.
Shlømo
Shlømo has denied ever having a non-consensual sexual relationship or sexual contact with a minor. He described the campaign against him as defamation and harassment and announced legal action against those spreading the allegations. A criminal complaint was later filed at the Paris Judicial Court concerning alleged rape, psychological violence and death threats. It is a complaint, not a charge or conviction, but it moves the matter into a formal legal framework.
Basswell
Basswell was widely named in the initial disclosures and subsequently lost numerous bookings. The allegations included extremely serious claims, but no reliable public reporting has confirmed a criminal complaint, charge or conviction.
CARV
CARV admitted to explicit private conversations with several women and sending intimate images while married. He described this as selfish behaviour, said he had hurt the person closest to him and ended the CARV project. He maintained the interactions were consensual and not criminal.
Odymel
Odymel said a former partner later described an unwanted sexual incident that allegedly occurred while he was asleep. He stated he had no memory of it and referenced a possible diagnosis of sexsomnia. He also said he was cooperating with a preliminary investigation.
HADES
HADES was named in the wider disclosure wave, though reporting has not clearly separated individual allegations against him from the broader set of claims. He denied all allegations in a video presented as a mock news broadcast, describing the situation as a witch hunt and criticising cancel culture. The format was widely criticised, and he later apologised for the tone of his response, saying he reacted from a place of hurt after facing accusations he maintained were untrue.
Fantasm
Fantasm’s case predates the STEER Files. He denied the allegations and pursued defamation proceedings. A Lyon court later found one woman guilty at first instance of defamation over an Instagram publication. She has said she will appeal and disputes the broader interpretation of the ruling. (FAZEmag)
This did not begin with “neorave”
I have written very critically about the “neorave” movement before. I still stand by the central argument of that article: much of what is being marketed as “Hard Techno” is musically built from Hardstyle and Hardcore while being commercially sold under the Techno name. However, I am not going to pretend that sexual misconduct was invented by this scene.
Across electronic music history, several high-profile figures have faced serious allegations. Derrick May has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, which he denies, and has faced event removals. Erick Morillo was charged with sexual battery in 2020. Datsik was accused of sexual misconduct in 2018 and lost major industry support. Bassnectar faced civil litigation alleging sexual exploitation of minors, denied wrongdoing, and later settled the case confidentially without a trial verdict.
These cases span genres and decades. The issue has been happening a lot in “neorave”, but is not confined to it.
What happens when the scene grows faster than its values?
The commercial “neorave” ecosystem developed at extraordinary speed after the pandemic. Artists who were barely known suddenly became international headliners. Events moved from clubs to warehouses, festivals and stadium-scale productions. Social-media pages presented every set as a violent explosion of lights, kicks, mosh pits and bodies pressed against barriers.
The artists did not simply perform music. They became characters.
They sold aggression, rebellion, sexuality, chaos and direct access. Their Instagram messages were part of the brand. Backstage proximity was part of the brand. Fans were encouraged to feel that the artist was one of them while the professional and financial distance between both sides became enormous.
This is where power becomes difficult to see. A young fan messaging an artist may feel that they are speaking as equals. They are not.
One person controls access, attention, guest lists, backstage invitations, career opportunities and the possibility of public humiliation. The other may be an eighteen-year-old who has spent months idolising them. That does not make every relationship between an artist and a fan abusive. Adults can meet, flirt and have consensual relationships regardless of fame. But pretending that fame creates no imbalance is equally ridiculous. The speed of “neorave’s” growth appears to have created a professional structure capable of selling thousands of tickets before it developed credible ways of handling the power those sales gave its stars.
What this does to Hard Dance and Techno
There is another uncomfortable part of this story that’s very often not spoken about. “neorave” has spent years taking the sound of Hardstyle and Hardcore, presenting it under the name of Techno and making it look like there’s no distinction at all. Now the same ambiguity means that both communities receive the consequences. Mainstream publications call the implicated artists “Techno DJ’s”, despite many traditional Techno listeners barely recognising the music as Techno. Hard Dance audiences recognise the kicks, melodies, edits, track structures and energy, but the music is rarely acknowledged as Hardstyle or Hardcore until a controversy reaches a Hard Dance festival. Dominator removing HADES and CARV is a perfect example. Suddenly this was no longer a separate trend happening somewhere on TikTok. It had reached one of Hardcore’s most established events.
And while these people are not part of our scene, we cannot use genre boundaries to wash our hands of the wider problem. Some Hard Dance events book “neorave” artists, and Hardstyle producers collaborate with them. Hardcore festivals use them to reach younger audiences. We cannot claim the audience when tickets are selling. and reject every connection when something goes wrong… at the same time, neither Hard Dance nor traditional Techno should be reduced to the behaviour of a rapidly commercialised movement that borrowed from both.
The scene is larger than these individuals. Protecting its reputation does not mean hiding what happened. It means proving through our response that these people do not represent the values we have.
The scene does not end with the person behind the decks
When an artist or agency collapses, the damage rarely stops with the person being accused.
STEER also involved agents, assistants, administrative workers and people coordinating international bookings. Festivals employ production crews, security, caterers, artist handlers, cleaners and local freelancers. A touring artist can support visual designers, photographers, technicians and managers.
Most of those people may know absolutely nothing about the alleged conduct.
This is why the collapse of an organisation creates such a horrible situation. People who are entirely innocent can suddenly lose months of work because someone above them is accused of abusing their position. But that cannot become an excuse for silence. The answer is not to protect a potentially dangerous individual because too many jobs depend on them. The question should be why one person was ever allowed to hold so much power that removing them could destroy everyone else. A healthy organisation should be capable of removing a founder, artist or executive without collapsing around them.
It should have reporting systems that do not answer to the person being reported. It should be able to suspend someone without deciding their criminal guilt. It should protect wages already earned, support workers who had no involvement and retain records so that a complaint does not disappear when a manager deletes an Instagram story.
When none of those systems exist, the only available options become silence or total destruction. Neither is justice.
Presumption of innocence is not a guaranteed booking
There is a phrase repeated endlessly whenever these controversies happen: “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
The presumption of innocence is fundamental. It protects every one of us from being criminally punished without proof. But a festival cancelling a booking is not the same as a court sending someone to prison. A promoter has responsibilities towards its audience, employees and partners. It may decide that the seriousness of an allegation makes continuing with a performance an unacceptable risk. It may also decide that the available evidence is too weak to justify cancellation.
Both decisions should be explainable. What the presumption of innocence does not create is a permanent right to festival stages, sponsorships, agencies or the audience’s money. In the same way, a cancellation should not be announced as if the promoter has personally established that a crime occurred.
The most responsible festival statements during this controversy acknowledged exactly that limitation: they could not judge the legal facts, but they could make a precautionary decision based on safety and trust.
That is the balance we need. A precautionary cancellation is not a conviction. The presumption of innocence is not a guaranteed booking.
And what about false allegations?
Fantasm’s first-instance defamation victory demonstrates that at least one court concluded that a particular public accusation could not be legally defended. Ignoring that because it complicates the preferred narrative would be as dishonest as presenting every allegation as a lie. False, distorted or recklessly repeated allegations can destroy lives. Social media rewards certainty, outrage and speed – the exact opposite of what a responsible investigation requires.
However, one false allegation does not disprove every other allegation against every other person.
We cannot take a favourable judgment towards Fantasm and use it to dismiss other claims, or the criminal complaint concerning Shlømo, for example. Similarly, we cannot use the broader volume of reports to declare a specific person guilty of claims that have not been clearly attributed or proven.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But each case must stand on its own evidence. That is more difficult than choosing one side and defending it blindly. It is also the only serious way of dealing with any of this.
Making the dancefloor safe enough to deserve our trust
It is tempting to end articles like this by saying that “the scene must do better”. But that means almost nothing.
Electronic music needs practical structures rather than another round of Instagram slides. Venues and promoters need independent reporting channels. If the complaint involves the owner, headline artist or booking manager, it cannot be handled by their friend or employee.
Staff and security teams need proper training – not simply instructions to remove the visibly drunk person causing trouble. Good Night Out Campaign, for example, works with venues and event organisers on anti-harassment policies, specialist training and clear response procedures.
Agencies need written procedures explaining what happens when allegations arise. Artists need boundaries concerning minors, private messages, guest lists, hotel access and backstage invitations.
Promoters need contracts allowing precautionary suspensions while also protecting uninvolved workers and money already earned.
Festivals need to explain whether someone has been temporarily removed, permanently excluded or reinstated after a review. Quietly putting an artist back on the line-up six months later and hoping nobody notices is not accountability.
Most importantly, people need somewhere to speak before their only remaining option is an anonymous Instagram account run by someone seeking revenge. Brad should never have needed to become the justice system of an entire scene.
The music is not guilty
A kick has no morality. A melody never assaulted anyone. A synthesiser did not manipulate a young fan. A genre did not send an unwanted message or protect a friend because their name sold tickets.
People do those things. Other people made decisions around them. They booked them, managed them, and maybe some warned friends privately while remaining silent publicly for fear of retaliation. Some defend people without knowing the facts. Others condemn them without reading anything beyond a screenshot.
The music itself remains innocent. But a scene is more than its music. A scene is the culture we build around it. It is who receives access, who holds power, who is believed, who gets protected and what happens when someone says that they no longer feel safe.
Electronic music does not belong exclusively to the artist standing above the crowd.
It belongs to the person dancing alone for the first time. To the woman watching over her drink. It belongs to the worker behind the barrier, the volunteer at the entrance, the local DJ opening an empty room and the raver who has travelled hundreds of kilometres because this music is the closest thing they have to home.
No booking, career, agency or festival is more valuable than their right to return home safely.
Respect, unity and freedom cannot remain slogans projected behind a stage.
They are obligations.
If we want the dancefloor to feel like home, we have to make it safe enough to deserve that name.
