Lewis Fautzi

The hypnotic engine of Gare Porto

In the nights of Gare Porto, Portuguese techno found one of its most stubborn engines. Lewis Fautzi honed a hypnotic, dark, and industrial sound there, with metallic bass and an almost mechanical pulse, which he would later take to Soma Records, Figure, and PoleGroup, and to dancefloors like Tresor, Lux Frágil, Berghain, and fabric. If his music could materialize, it would be that polished machine advancing between the gravity of a black hole and the brightness of a star: cosmic, tense, and deliberately physical.

Barcelos, Soma and the album vocation

Born in Barcelos in 1991, he started DJing and producing very young—the first record he bought was "The Bells" by Jeff Mills—and found in the northern Portuguese scene the context to turn the studio into a daily habit. In 2013, the same year as a key release on Soniculture, he started a relationship with Soma, Slam's label, which the following year translated into his first album, The Gare Album, named after that club. In 2015 came Space Exploration, a conceptual work more open to ambient and experimentation. Jeff Mills even played several of his productions in a single set, an early recognition that fits with the Portuguese artist's obsession with rhythmic detail.

Figure, PoleGroup and the discipline of Mutual Rytm

By 2015 his catalog already included EPs on Figure, by Len Faki, and pieces on PoleGroup, by Oscar Mulero, with remixes by Exium and Kwartz, as well as works on Warm Up and a collaboration with Pär Grindvik. In 2017 he released the album The Ascension of Mind on PoleGroup. He has also appeared on BPitch Control with Deep Illusion (2018) and has maintained a link with Soma, as in Properties Specifications (2023). The most recent leap takes him to Mutual Rytm, SHDW's label: the EP Beneath the Surface (2026) is his debut under his own name there, after having previously passed through the label under the alias Non Cyclic. In the same cycle he added Quatro Níveis on Hayes, Gravity Won't Hold Me alongside The Advent, and Ghosts Don't Text Me on his own label.

Faut Section, aliases and the live act

He founded Faut Section in 2013 as a Portuguese platform for raw techno and the experimental edges of electronic music. From that house he has released albums such as Insanity Department (2019), Manner Of Death (2023), and Unwritten Chapters (2025), and has branched his vision into aliases: Nuklear Default in the early years and, later, Non Cyclic and Space Program, designed to explore more psychedelic branches or a faster, more physical techno. As a DJ and as a live act he has been a regular at Awakenings, Lisboa Electrónica, and NEOPOP, with his own live set at the festival in 2026. Current worldwide booking is handled by ZENITH Bookings. He remains anchored in a techno of tension and metallic texture, with over a decade of continuous discography.