- On our way into Warehouse Elementenstraat for the second night of Unpolished 2018, my colleague observed that the scene at the door was pretty orderly compared to past events here. She almost sounded disappointed. This might have been because the parties thrown by Reaktor, the Amsterdam promoter behind Unpolished and similar events like Katharsis, have come to embody a sort of delicious chaos, an unfiltered version of clubbing where the music is uncompromising, the venues are raw and the crowd is left to get on with it. The text on the event page summed it up: "Unpolished is back to wreak havoc on a weekend of madness."
The energy was already electric by 12:30 AM in the second space. It took less than a minute of being on the floor for a guy in his 40s to catch my eye and give me a low-five and a fist bump as he raved to TAFKAMP's "warm-up" set. I used scare quotes there because the Rotterdam DJ was going for it, channelling a ravey '90s vibe that generated one of the best atmospheres of the night. He blended tracks with speed and skill, drawing for electro stompers like Cybonix's "Let Your Body Rock" before complementing its broken beat with a high-octane four-on-the-floor cut. The relatively low ceiling and subtle lighting was a decent contrast to the fuller production in the main space, where the veteran French artist Umwelt was building a wall of sound with techno and electro. (He was billed to play back-to-back with Helena Hauff but she didn't make it due to snow-related flight issues.) It was taking a little longer for things to pop off here; Umwelt's selections were fierce but lacked the attention-grabbing dynamics needed to fully engage the crowd.
It was almost a given that every set at Unpolished would be tough as concrete, but as the night wore on it became interesting to see which version of this connected best. In the main space, Miss Djax and Perc approached techno from differing angles, the former leaning on older tracks with dramatic crescendos and the latter drawing from a more modern palate of grim industrial influences. They both kept the party simmering nicely, but The Mover's live set was more memorable. The Frankfurt artist was clearly in the zone as he cut between moods and rhythms. There was techno, electro and sounds bordering on trance, all shot through with the intensity of hardcore. He finished by holding aloft his drum controller and playing distorted gabber kick drums by hand, a sort of twisted rave version of a guitar solo.
I only caught Umfang's last few tracks in the second room, but when I arrived I'm pretty sure she was playing Cygnus X's trance classic "The Orange Theme," which was followed by direct and stripped-back techno tracks around the 140 BPM range. The crowd had thinned by the time Ryan James Ford, ordinarily a techno DJ, started his breakcore set. He seemed to be wrapping his head around mixing the sound's mind-bending drums as he went, but eventually settled into a groove as he dropped Venetian Snares. I was told Manu Le Malin played one of the night's standout sets later on in the main space, going an hour past the scheduled closing time, but I'd decided to channel Unpolished's madness by booking a flight back to London for 9 AM that morning. As I sat in the middle seat on the aeroplane, a fresh rave aroma on my clothes, I reflected that, as well as the wild music, some of the party's details—the stall selling nitrous balloons, people smoking crafty cigarettes in the venue, the lack of overbearing security—all helped foster a sense of freedom. In the often slick and professionalised world of large-scale events these days, that was pretty refreshing.
Photo credit /
Janneke Tol