Dekmantel: The Algorithms Favourite Festival
How lineups, living vicariously, and nostalgia fuel dance music's most renowned festival.
Dekmantel has made the most weighted impact on the European dance scene out of any festival in recent history. This edition rounded off ten years, of their festival spectacle combining a well-rounded program that touches on nearly every electronic music element and beyond. For ten days the schedule consisted of pre-parties, conference talks, workshops, and the actual three-day festival rounding off their largest program to date. Throughout its history, it has defined itself through excellent musical curation, a simple but stunning location, and the most effective online hype machine in the history of electronic music programming. It has set the gold standard for what some believe a festival should be. Now with branches extending from the organisation through Lente Kabinet, Dekmantel Selectors, their editions in Rio and Sau Paulo, and their club takeover series it has reached further heights than Dimensions, which can be seen as its predecessor being the go-to festival of the European circuit. With the change in popularity of electronic music and how people approach partying Dekmantels has played a key role for better or worse. But when an idea or event has reached this calibre, it’s important to take a step back look at how they got here, what they achieved and examine what exactly this all means.
The festival was premiered in 2013, preceding this Dekmantel had been running events for six years in and around Amsterdam. The initial gathering was capped at 5000 tickets per day with a lineup that could have easily allowed for double the attendees. From the beginning what we can see in this lineup is three things;
. Standout names that would be consistently booked, becoming sort of Dekmantel residents (but never officially).
Marcel Dettman, Blawan, Ben UFO, Joy Orbison, Cinnaman, Interstellar Funk, Antal
. Live projects and B2Bs that were not festival regulars
Trade (Blawan and Surgeon), Magic Mountain High (Move D b2b Juju and Jordash)
. Niche eye-catching acts.
Voices from the Lake, Underground Resistance
This consistently successful formula gave the festival a bubbling hype around the lineup with effective energy online and through word of mouth. Festival lineup releases don’t carry the same weight as they used to due to oversaturation, the same people will play the same string of events. But not Dekmantel, their lineups had an edge you always knew you would get more than the standard, the question was how were they gonna do it? This aided their achievement of long-in-advance sell-out events up until their first post-Covid edition.
So what’s it like on the inside? The environment of Amsterdam Bos (forest) gives the venue a perfect environment of picturesque nature conveniently located about 30 minutes from the city centre. Of course, being a Dutch festival the unique element of the majority of attendees cycling to it is present. The site of festival goers pedalling towards the event against the green backdrop with the sound of a kickdrum leaking its way through the treetop canopy is sublime and stays with you long after the party has passed. This mode of travel also creates a form of unity or collectiveness among attendees (despite our individualism we all want to be part of an idea). Inside is a carefully crafted layout of currently eight stages that never really feel like they’re too far away from each other ringing out every variety of electronic music. You are never not spoiled for choice at any given moment. There’s a nice flow to the environment, stages do become too crowded but are easily avoidable with the vast selection on offer. It somehow feels personal and big at the same time which is tough to pull off with an attendance of currently 10,000. No surprise a city famed for its design skills creates an ideal environment and comfortable location in which to be served only the finest product.
The crowd at Dekmantel has been a crossroads of people from every sub-scene and stereotype that populates the European circuit, which is interesting to behold. English coke-heads cross paths with mainland Europe scenesters as people move from act to act. House purists escape themselves at the likes of DJ Fett Burger while DnB fans reminisce to Goldie. Multitudes of backgrounds, ideas, and attitudes towards dance music exist within a very small radius for a brief moment in time. This of course brings a beautiful colour and atmosphere shift when moving from about the stages. While this is part and parcel of the modern festival it feels a lot deeper in the Amsterdam forest than at a party that follows the standard house stage, techno stage and so on. Creating a communal space at a big festival that opens a window to what different scenes are like is difficult due to the dangers of popularity. Certain scenes and sub-groups of electronic music are quite selective about what events they will travel to. Festivals of Dekmantels size are usually ignored because bigger parties are watered down. But through developing such a reputation for good music even the pickiest partygoer wanted to visit at least once. People who have strong opinions about who they want to party with and where they want to party temporarily allowed their guard to drop for this particular party. If you can get Kreuzberg mephedrone fanatics to leave their safe space then you’ve seriously achieved something. Online usually paints the attendee as a light blue short sleeved shirt wearing type. While this individual is represented I don’t think it's fair to paint the entire festival with the same brush. This has of course begun to change in the last while but I'll get to that in a bit.
So how did it get to achieve this? One simple word, marketing. Dekmantels launch coincides with the explosion of sophisticated digital marketing in the 2010s. Capitalising on this immersed their online audience in a very glossy depiction of what they were doing. These days we’re used to this shiny exterior with festival marketing feeling repetitive and uninspired, they were positioned at the right place at the right to be seen and to have an impact with this marketing. The online content and the hype they created had flare and energy coming off of it. It made you excited, it made you look out your window and wonder why you were sitting at your kitchen table in Sheffield while it rained when all of these people drenched in sunshine were having the time of their lives listening to the Head High remix of Mars. They cornered FOMO and promoted it in every outlet used to send their message. This is largely thanks to the Boiler Room presence at Dekmantel which fueled the mass online presence to a significant degree. The presence of Boiler Room at music festivals is now a regular occurrence, however, in 2013 this was a brand new venture for them. They had previously appeared at day parties (with only audio content uploaded after), but to have a three-day live-streaming program was a step towards expansion. No matter what your opinions of them, it can’t be denied they pulled it off well achieving some of their most viewed content in their history. The curation of artists was varied allowing something for everyone and the way they filmed it made the corrugated tin can shed look like a place you’d wanna spend all day at. When I was 19 I didn’t have the money to travel to this space so I lived vicariously through these live streams. It’s one of the few times I would have sat down to watch people play out via my computer screen. Many people like me did the same and that's a powerful thing. Before Covid getting a significant amount of people to sit down to watch a DJ mix would have been a serious challenge. The concept of having a dance in your living room was not legitimised at this point, as we could actually live our lives. Playing out your festival fantasy through a live stream hooked itself into people. It meant that you could be inside the festival “experience” (if that's the right way to describe it) without leaving the comfort of your own home. You could also decide then and there that you’d attend next year, with a convenient sign-up for next year's tickets waiting for you on the website. What we can see here is Boiler Room moving from a streaming platform into more of a tool of persuasion. With the current saturation of this attraction at different festivals it’s clear some promoters feel it's necessary to engage audiences and sell tickets.
Creating a party that was simultaneously in real life and online was by no means a small achievement but it was what was happening off camera that kept people coming back. Dekmantel had this brilliant way of being the location for big things to happen. While achieving this with the rare performances, they were also achieving this with sets that people just didn’t stop talking about. The first year saw Robert Hood's Floorplan project play just after the release of Paradise on June 25th of that year. This is a world where nobody is familiar with Never Grow Old or Baby Baby for sure two of the most iconic tracks of the 2010s. It's at Dekmantel that people really see for the first time what these two songs can actually do to a dancefloor, setting the fire underneath both that would eventually launch them into the stratosphere where they currently remain continually sending people into complete frenzies when they’re played out. Jeff Mills 2016 set is spoken of with awe and wonder as if it was some quasi-religious experience. The visuals of this performance presented a dystopian hellish landscape of blinding strobes and crimson red as he played Angular Momentum creating an energy similar to watching a building burn down, pinning you with shock and awe. These among others such as Ben UFO’s 2014 Selectors set and Surgeons in 2013 have joined the collection of fabled mixes you had to be there for. The event also became the perfect vehicle to launch a song on. Fatima Yamaha's What's a Girl To Do is the perfect example of how the festival could be used to spread your music to an audience of unimaginable size. The track had previously been released back in 2004 through Irish label D1 recordings and had been quietly existing in the background for several years. As it began to gain more energy featuring in the likes of Hud Mo’s Essential Mix in the run-up to the festival the stage was set for something big to happen. Fatima Yamaha who had been operating with a low profile for quite some time throughout his career took to the stage to reveal himself and play out the keys of the Nintendo-sounding hit. The track was placed in an envelope dropped through the algorithm letter box and began multiplying immediately to the point of inescapability. The worldwide success of this song would not have occurred in the way that it did if it hadn’t been done through the medium of Dekmantel and Boiler Room.
Dekmantels preference for a large online presence while beneficial is also grounds for criticism. The Boiler Room “characters” or “incidents” had been a phenomenon before the festival but really gained trajectory because of the festival. The live streams being a hit had a bigger audience than those who would normally tune in to their regular broadcasts. This and the large replay value of the sets encouraged an increase in performance-like antics. This disliked troupe of modern dance music has been discussed online to death and at this point is cliche both to take part in and to hate it. What is important to be aware of is what it signifies. Acting strangely on the dancefloor isn’t a new thing, it’s historically relevant from early 90s rave culture to the Thunderdome series. But the person travelling to the festival wanting to gain attention and appear on camera is a modern concept that reeks of self-centredness. While the prevalence of this unfortunate side effect does not literally stem from the festival (this was happening for a long time before) it did become intrinsically linked to Dekmantels image. Does this aspect ruin or detract from what it is? Yes and no. It positions the festival in a particular light that's not favourable in the eyes of many. When you intend to attract everyone you accept this comes with the negative aspects of the culture you love. The point of Dekmantel was always to be broad and at that moment in time including a space for streaming sets made sense. They were doing something new and had more to gain by teaming up with Boiler Room than they had to lose. To avoid this while attending is simple. Don’t visit the Boiler Room stage. It was very easy to avoid this overcrowded mess when I attended. In the last year, the stage has dissolved and given room for the Hor programming. When Hor arrived it didn't come with the stereotypical attention-grabbing baggage that Boiler Room possessed. Only time will tell if this trope will continue into the future of the festival.
Like all festivals post-COVID, Dekmantel is encountering problems. Possibly struggling under the weight of its own success and current size the reports back paint a different picture than what the festival has been previously loved for. There are a few aspects to this. It becomes expensive fast combining tickets, flights, accommodation, taxis to and from the festival, and nighttime entertainment. What this means is that the crowd attending has to be in a certain wealth bracket more than ever before. While this was always the case what could be observed in the past was attendees making an exception for Dekmantel whether financially or logistically because the lineup and the energy of the festival justified it. This seems to be dying a death at this stage. They have acquired local competition with the creation of Draaimolen in their own back yard whose visual output is reminiscent of earlier Dekmantel years and curates very rare performances such as Skrillex B2B Blawan last year. Previously getting your hands on tickets was difficult. It would sell out rapidly with re-sales going for excessive amounts. These days like a lot of live events tickets are available up until the day with re-sales going for far cheaper. This can be looked at slightly positively as it does make the festival accessible to locals who wouldn’t have attended due to high cost and demand. It definitely doesn’t paint a good picture of the festival's finances though. The current feel of the festival seemed to be reflected in the weather this year. Optically Dekmantel is sunny, its shades on, t-shirt, shorts and listening to Donell being bounced around by Joy Orbison while you sip on a pint of Grolsch allowing you to forget about the massive gaping hole in your bank account. This year we were treated to grey skies and rain through our computer screens diminishing the FOMO to a significant degree.
In the age where everything is too big, too commercial, too boring and dance music has strayed further and further than what it originally was, pointing the finger at Dekmantel and saying you’re the problem would be an easy thing to do. But if you were to do that you’d have no nuance in your opinion. Despite contributing to this aspect of the culture it's unfair to say this is what defines the organisation. Dekmantels entirety as a label, festival, and voice is grounded in local promotion, education, and shining a light on artists who deserve attention. They pay their dues and are open to learning. Space is consistently reserved for members of the Dutch scene (Sterac, Animistic Beliefs, Carista) to have a notable presence. After being called out in 2019 by Chilean artist Valesuchi for their lack of South American representation on the lineup despite holding parties in Brazil we can see a change with an increase in bookings across their platforms (Bad Sista, Marcos Valle, RHR). The involvement of Red Light radio carved out a space where lesser-known Dutch natives like Mr. Mendel, Beesmunt Soundsystem and Jan Van Kampen shared space with known greats like Legowelt and Mary Lake. Their recent set of club tours which took place in Prague, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Warsaw focused on an integration of the Dekmantel sound to compliment local talent. Their lineup at Bassiani wove in I-F, Young Marco, and Sedef Adassi in with Hamatsuki, G Kura, and Suze Ljo. Making for an excellent combination of legacy, current big names, local talent, and a plethora of sounds, while avoiding the standard “takeover” style night of travelling labels. As big as they are, they haven't forgotten the idea of organic, setting them apart from a number of organisations of the same prestige.
With the current economic and scene climate what the future holds for Dekmantel is hazy at best. Longevity issues are apparent due to possibly a tired formula, a saturated festival market, and the cost of partaking. With a significant drop in people attending music festivals over 2024, these problems can be clearly seen. Like all festivals that gain in rapid popularity, it has fallen victim to what I call “Too Big for Its Own Boots Syndrome”. They are running on nostalgia, people want to experience what was in the present, but unfortunately for them, this is near impossible. It’s not the same minds attending or the same point in time. You can only manufacture “moments” to such a degree and forcing them never works. This doesn’t change the power of a rose-tinted view of the past. The ripples of hype, curating the most over-stimulating lineups, and the fact that I and many like me dived straight into the marketing made us infatuated with it. When I attended after Covid it was great. Was it as good as what my earlier self would have wanted? No absolutely not. That's literally impossible, nothing can be that good. And here lies the problem. If you set about creating an amazing party and at the same time you create one of the biggest internet frenzies, both simultaneously powering each other. Eventually, the hype is gonna outweigh the party resulting in a party that can’t keep up with the perceived idea of itself. The idea of the thing slowly begins to consume the literal event until one day what appears is unrecognisable. On the other hand, maybe I’m being overly negative. It’s clear I’m also adding to this cycle maybe jaded by my lack of attendance of what was sold to me as big moments. I do believe they will persist, adapt, and weave themselves into the form that will work for the festival market what that looks like remains to be seen. Will it ever be comparable to or surpass what was? Doubtful even if they did in the land of the internet negativity always shouts louder.