Watch the live stream of our Dekmantel broadcast here.
As the turbulent metabolism of the electronic underground churns quicker than ever, floating a festival in the summer season’s already crowded pool is no easy feat – but to preserve its spirit beyond a successful launch is harder still. As Amsterdam’s Dekmantel festival silver-surfs into its third year, the ideals behind Thomas Martojo and Casper Tielrooij’s simple blueprint seem more worthy of celebration than ever.
Invariably it’s the new prospects on the festival market that catch the eye – the dynamic debutantes full of promise and untarnished reputation. The festivals that might catch a wave on their maiden voyage, but could spend the years after pinning back the tide of international expectation. Keeping the vibe alive is a delicate alchemy: expansion tends to be a financial necessity but bigger crowds and deeper corporate partnerships might spoil the brew. It’s a precarious balancing act: you only have to look down the broken back of the Croatian coastline to see where the scales have tipped the wrong way, swung into imbalance by a burly British invasion. Elsewhere in Europe it’s corporate enterprise that can smother a good thing. Meanwhile, it’s the locally-minded festivals like Amsterdam’s Dekmantel that have managed to tap into something really quite special.
So what is it that Martojo and Tielrooij are getting so right?
Perhaps critically, Dekmantel didn’t start as a festival. Its story is a gradual one that began in their hometown The Hague, from which the pair’s crew made regular pilgrimage to the biggest techno parties in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. By 2007, Thomas and Casper made the move to Amsterdam, kick-starting their Dekmantel parties with a string of passionately curated events that focussed on the Detroit influence they thought was missing in Amsterdam’s clubs at the time (Robert Hood and Moodymann were amongst their earliest guests).
The parties started small, filling clubs not much bigger than 200-capacity. Unalloyed to any one venue, they were allowed to grow with their popularity, doubling in size year on year. These shifts were slow but sure – a steadily upscaling labour of love nursed by two tirelessly fervid curators with a set of unflagging ideals. The motto was simple: to showcase artists for whom they felt deserved local and intentional shine, while honouring the exciting plurality in the Dutch scene. In not much time, they’d notched up a reputation for billing the staggeringly heavyweight: beyond their commitment to the Detroit exchange (Theo Parrish, Kyle Hall), deep connections were made with Ostgut Ton and some of the UK’s finest (Floating Points, Ben UFO and the Numbers squad all made repeat visits).
As the Dekmantel following gathered significant organic growth, its spirited founders were always carefully cognisant of when and how to nudge the enterprise forward. After establishing themselves as one of the city’s most celebrated parties, they sought to expand operations through their own label in 2009 – first with an EP and LP from their Israeli-born, Amsterdam-residing friends Juju & Jordash. From there, Martojo and Tielrooij committed to building a roster of the wonderfully deep and wildly progressive: local hero (and Dekmantel’s first ever guest) San Proper came next, followed by the likes of New Jersey OG Joey Anderson and Ukrainian savant Vakula.
It was in these early years that the Dekmantel ethos was implicitly forged – a spirit which embraced the off-centre, celebrated the underground and actively reinvigorated Amsterdam’s waning club culture. As a conceptual frame to launch Dekmantel the festival, it was notionally robust – but Martojo and Tielrooij lacked any real experience in festival production. Their parties had reached a mile-high but shifting to an outdoor weekender could sound the death knell for even a clubnight as solidly respected as theirs – it was a wild leap of faith.
The motto was simple: to showcase artists for whom they felt deserved local and intentional shine, while honouring the exciting plurality in the Dutch scene.
In 2013, they enlisted the help of close-friend (and now-partner) Matthias Theben Terville to materialise their vision. Their first full-blown foray into festival status was a glowing success: a three-day bender in the Amsterdam Bos with a fantasy line-up on a boutique scale. The event’s program was one of the most refined in Europe that summer, rolling out a 150-strong blend of international heavyweights, scene veterans and emergent talent. But for all the geographic diversity of acts on offer, it’s the homegrown selectors who give Dekmantel its distinctive essence. Between Antal, Tom Trago, Young Marco, San Proper, Makam, Melon, Jameszoo and so, so many more, the local roll-call runs deep and proud. Alongside its overwhelmingly Dutch crowd, Dekmantel duly launched as a community project as much as a personal one – a soaring success not just for its founders, but for Amsterdam’s bubbling electronic underground.
After planned expansion into their second year, there were light concerns the team wouldn’t manage to recapture the magic. More international exposure, bigger crowds and avid expectations threatened to change the vibe. Au contraire, the second edition went up with even more enthusiasm, ecstatically bolstered with afterparties in the city’s since-fallen superclub Trouw.
In a month, Martojo and Tielrooij are gunning for a hat-trick. And this year’s edition is marked with even grander ambition. Amsterdam’s iconic Muziekgebouw is primed to host a pre-festival opening featuring Autechre and proto-techno composer Manuel Göttsching performing his seminal E2-E4. The weekend will now also be bolstered with a fully-fledged night programme across three rooms at Melkweg, one of the city’s leading venues. Having already geared up with Lente Kabinet – their dazzlingly chill one-day festival in May – the stage seems comfortably set. With a city-wide backing and unanimous acclaim worldwide, it almost seems like light work for them at this point (…almost). After years of ground-up struggle and gently growing triumphs, it’s hard not to stand back and salute their moment in the sun. It couldn’t be any more deserved.
♦︎ ♦︎ ♦︎
– Boiler Room’s partnership with Dekmantel is entering its third summer. To find out more on our three-day showcase at this year’s festival, head here. –