Festival Review – Amsterdam Dance Event 2022
A ‘Dam good party
It all starts with a noise. Well, not so much one noise, more a dense, looped collage of ambient sound, high ends shimmering with the promise of euphoria, lows deep enough to make you question whether ear defenders might have been an idea.
Outside Paradiso, one of Amsterdam’s legacy addresses boasting a history spanning squat to pivotal venue of the punk scene to cultural centre, it’s a surprisingly summery afternoon for mid-October. Inside the building’s main room, a high-ceilinged concert hall with tiered balconies, a veritable space station of equipment stands in the middle, vertical obelisk suspended from the ceiling above ready to screen bespoke visuals created live from footage captured at the event itself.
As expected, technophiles and geeks stand frothing at the mouth, phones in hand, transfixed by the near-endless arrays of synths, drum and effects machines, knobs, faders, pads, wires, screens, gadgets and gizmos. Within an hour, this museum-like orgy of equipment fetishisation will be no more as we descend into an outrageously full throttle party soundtracked by outrageously good techno. STOOR, Dutch techno doyen Speedy J’s genius concept, borders on lunacy: invite four artists to join in the round for a live techno jam session running non-stop, open-to-close.
For this edition the other names involved are Surgeon, Dasha Rush, ROD, and Rødhad, all of who mean serious business, none of who know what will happen after the first broken drums start building tension out of that formative loop. The rest is a blurry, beautiful, unpredictable, no-more-than-four-minutes-before-things-switch-up display of groundbreaking live production. Even those on the bill seem visibly surprised and ecstatic at the results. Unique enough to wish you could relive every stomp and sweaty second daily, in reality the magic lies in the fleeting nature of each moment. Once heard, never repeated, hard to recall.
It would be easy to roll out cliches at this point — “not that we should be surprised, this is what ADE is all about.” Perhaps not, though. Founded in 1996, around the time electronic club music was truly gaining a global foothold, Amsterdam Dance Event is a beast unto itself and whatever you want to make it. The Wednesday-Sunday multi-venue marathon has long-since established itself as the go-to diary date for a healthy (or unhealthy?) proportion of the dance and nightlife industry, exemplified by the throngs of PRs, agents, managers, promoters and others spilling out of, and into, hipster hotels, brown bars, and everywhere between. Ultimately, though, that’s just one side of dice you can roll with.
To put the scale into perspective, 2022, the 27th ADE, boasts more than 1,000 individual events across its conference and festival offering at over 200 locations, with an estimated 450,000 people visiting. Some of these — such as DGTL, Awakenings, Into the Woods, Dockyard, Secret Project and AMF — are bonafide city festivals in their own right, spanning multiple days and taking over extensive sites with various marquees, warehouses and obligatory gargantuan lineups.
On the flip, more intimate sessions are happening in spaces here, there and anywhere with room for enough people to create an atmosphere and the desire to make it work. Parties aside, daytime options run from an ever-expanding (and necessary) Green programme, highlights this year include panels on Creative Climate Justice and Circular Event Management, to practical workshops with boundary-pushers like Portrait XO, who introduces attendees to the possibilities of AI music making.
Our own experience exemplifies the choice. Out-of-town Club Atelier proves well worth the 20 minute or so cab from the city: a welcoming, three roomed destination complete with couched lounging area, large outdoor terrace and an expansive lineup with plenty of Romanian minimal drive imported via the Repere crew, who team up with Netherlands-based Locked-In and and Swiss team Keep It Going. Praslea, Unai Trotti, Mother Earth and Valentino Kanzyani are among those who step up and then some.
At Garage Noord, Avalon Emerson and Anunaku’s back-to-back splices techno with trance, 140s with drum & bass, experimentalism with universally accessible beats stopping short of mainstream fodder. Arriving into the city early Wednesday evening, our first port of call, beer aside, is Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. Not just another unpronounceable Dutch word, this huge, glass-fronted building on the banks of the river IJ (translated into the delightfully direct Music Building on the IJ) is among Amsterdam’s most important classical venues. Not this evening, though, with the performance hall dedicated to a string of deep, immersive ambient sets.
Istanbul-born, ‘Dam-based Nadia Struiwigh opens with elegant, weightless selections to set the mood before Donato Dozzy and Neel’s critically and publicly acclaimed Voices From The Lake take control for something that borders on dance floor, without really reaching it. In truth, the space might not be ideally suited, albeit the headliners are blessed with highly effective — if subtle — lighting work illuminating individual stalls above in a suitably beguiling, but not randomised order. Like so much of this year’s ADE, though, the real joy is in symbolism.
Dance music has emerged from one crisis into another. No longer suffering lockdowns, nevertheless unpredictable ticket sales, rocketing overheads and a persistent refusal to address glaring problems with the ecosystem (pop isn’t the only one eating itself) all pose existential threats. Despite all that, meandering back through the streets of Amsterdam around 3AM Saturday morning following a mesmerising house music masterclass from Louie Vega at the W Hotel, the sheer volume of soirees and throw downs unfolding, finishing or just getting started is a sight to truly behold. And hold dear. After the trauma, trials and tribulations of recent times, whatever lies ahead can’t change this truth — it’s really, really good to be back.
Martin Hewitt