- It's hard to imagine a more complete five days of electronic music than Amsterdam Dance Event. From wildly popular mainstream acts like Hardwell to staunchly underground DJs like Mike Servito, ADE brings nearly every corner of the industry into one city. Its biggest asset might be Amsterdam itself—the former blends seamlessly into the latter, and for a long weekend, dance music feels as much a part of the fabric of the place as bicycles and canals. On any given day or night between Wednesday and Sunday, you're presented with dozens of party options, so the best you can do is cut your own path and accept that you're bound to miss something. Rather than try to catch a little of everything—a strategy that would have had me logging more hours in taxis than on dance floors—I devoted time to a handful of sets that looked especially intriguing.
That's how I ended up at DGTL's massive warehouse space on Thursday. The event was a big Life And Death showcase featuring label heavyweights Tale Of Us and DJ Tennis. By far the most eye-catching name on the lineup, though, was DJ Harvey—neither a member of the Life And Death crew, nor someone I could easily imagine on such a big stage. I guessed Harvey would adapt well to his surroundings, and he basically looked at home amongst the neon tubes and disco balls that framed the booth. His mix of sultry disco, spacious house and pounding beat-tracks sounded great in the enormous space, but the crowd grew noticeably sparser as he played. Watching from the side, I worried the set was a flop. Then a friend emerged from the middle and urged me to get involved. From within, it was as buzzing as any dance floor I encountered at ADE—Harvey hadn't cleared it so much as whittled it down to a core contingent who lapped up every oddball selection. I've heard more compelling Harvey sets, but it's rare to hear such gutsy music played through the stacks of a festival-sized arena.
The annual Breakfast Club daytime party on Saturday didn't have any comparable left-turns. Instead, the lineup was entirely devoted to underground house, techno and disco selectors spread across three rooms at Melkweg. Levon Vincent, peerless behind the decks when he's at his best, was who drew me to the party, and his set was as excellent as expected, but it was Jay Daniel who really blew me away. I entered the Old Hall to "Royal Dilemma," the lead cut on his recent Karmatic Equations double-pack on Wild Oats, but I hardly recognized anything else over the course of his two hours. (The whole crowd seemed to know every peak and valley of Moodymann's "Shades Of Jae," though, which made for one of the day's most thrilling moments.) His transitions were ballsy, his mixing admirably tight, and his pacing followed a fantastically strange logic, winding from boisterous vocal house to knotted-up, futuristic rhythm tools. Daniel has played in Japan and Australia and toured across Europe in 2014, but this set still felt like a star turn for the Detroiter. It was without question the best selection I heard from a relative newcomer at ADE this year.
No one I saw in Amsterdam found better synergy between the crowd and the club than Four Tet at Trouw on Saturday night. (Full disclosure: he played on a lineup put together by Resident Advisor.) Part of what makes Trouw so special is that the DJ is often positioned a little ways into the crowd—the stage behind the booth works as an extension of the dance floor. This lends the main room a particularly communal feel, like the crowd is giving the DJ one massive bear hug. At this party, Kieren Hebden sounded like he was hugging everyone back. With a string of big, blasting tracks—Loco Dice's 2006 gem "El Gallo Negro" was the unexpected highlight—he drew the crowd in rather than blast it into oblivion. It highlighted one of Trouw's most curious qualities: it's a raw, industrial space, but music sounds and feels as warm there as it does anywhere. Four Tet's set was the last most of us would ever hear at Trouw, which added a bittersweet tinge to what was otherwise a joyous four hours of house.
I'd planned to go back to Trouw the next afternoon to catch some of their superb Sunday lineup: the likes of Omar-S and Talaboman were joining a string of residents, including club boss Olaf Boswijk, for a party set to run through Monday morning. The Amsterdam Marathon, though, had made transit throughout the city difficult. It was easier for me to get to a party across the water from Centraal Station, hosted by SlapFunk Records and promoters VBX and Natives, than to get back to Trouw. My friends there were sending me texts raving about how good it was, so I went for it. Tolhuistuin, a pint-sized hall in a small complex of multipurpose venues, was by far the most intimate space I came across at ADE this year, and with netting and Christmas lights spanning the ceiling just over the dance floor, it felt a bit like a private rave in the middle of the jungle. (Persistent soundsystem issues added to the woodsy feel in a decidedly negative way.) Using a massive, punchy-sounding rotary mixer, The Mole played a downright mind-bending set pitched somewhere between spacey disco and Panorama Bar-ready house. Ryan Elliott's surprise set veered toward the latter, naturally, with a healthy sprinkle of SlapFunk material rounding out all manner of shuffling, up-tempo party tunes. Mr. Ties proved the unexpected disappointment, though. Some sloppy mixing and an ill-conceived hardware/DJ hybrid setup marred an otherwise lovely selection of house records. This wasn't enough to drag me down, though. ADE remained a potent reminder that electronic music is alive and well, and that Amsterdam is a great place to hear it.