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In the picturesque Amsterdam Bos, verdant grasslands, clear blue lakes and wooded areas form a vast patchwork of nature under cloudless skies. It’s a scene of perfect tranquility, but something is amiss. Maybe it’s the heavy techno beats being pumped out from a DJ booth tucked between the trees.
This is Dekmantel festival, an EDM extravaganza that has evolved over the past decade from a series of intimate underground club gatherings. Each year, ravers in their thousands flock to the Dutch capital, packing themselves around stages built out of towering scaffolding or kaleidoscopic swirls of fabric.
Over 200 artists feature on this year’s lineup, from homegrown talent such as Young Marco to Northern Irish dance heavyweights BICEP. Organisers have also added a football tournament, workshops and even an organ recital held inside Amsterdam’s oldest building, Oude Kerk, all the while keeping music at its heart.
It’s a surprisingly intimate affair. Despite its cultural significance, Dekmantel is relatively small in capacity, with just over 15,000 ticketholders attending each day. Meanwhile the lineup, although not full of huge headline names, offers everything from hard techno on the UFO stage to deep house and disco at The Loop.
Fans clamour for a glimpse of the Amsterdam-born, London-based Jyoty Singh as she plays her debut set, packing tight onto three levels of scaffolding and queuing out the door of the spectacular Radar stage. With her infectious charisma and vibrant tracks, the 33-year-old commands the crowd as she seamlessly mixes classic Dutch beats including DJ Jean’s “The Launch” with modern high energy dancehall into her set.
Speaking to The Independent, Jyoty praises the tiered staging and atmosphere inside the Radar event space: “The sound is more contained, even though we’re outdoors,” she says. “It feels like a separate party inside and that motivates the crowd so much more.”
The festival is a “bucket list thing” for her, she adds. “Dekmantel has a reputation for electronic DJ’s it’s one of the most prestigious festivals in the world.”
Seasoned festival-goers are likely to agree. There’s a calmness in the air here, coupled with a mutual respect among the festival’s guests, perhaps due to the fact that it tends to attract a slightly more mature fanbase. Everyone is impeccably dressed, flaunting layered outfits that wouldn’t look amiss on a Paris catwalk.
When it comes to sustainability, too, Dekmantel feels miles ahead. Most attendees arrive on bikes; after the shows end, the floor around the stages is virtually spotless. And there’s a unique approach stage production intended to make you feel like you’re in a club, even as the skies turn dark and stars glint above the revellers. For the indoor shows, we witness UFO-shaped lighting rigs glide above us while fireworks explode behind a wall of glass.
There’s a minor kerfuffle when the inflatable Greenhouse stage collapses momentarily during James Blake’s set with Mala. Yet the duo still manage to deliver a genre-bending show of soul, grime and dance. In the opening moments of his set, the Grammy-award winning producer samples UK rapper Dave, blending an unreleased freestyle over a dynamic house track that prompts the audience to erupt. Blake cools them down again with “Voyeur”, the looping piano track from his 2013 album, Overgrown. It’s a set of dizzying highs and satisfying lows – just like Dekmantel itself.
