A plethora of great music spread across a beautiful weekend in Amsterdam is as appealing as a curry to a drunken, and this year's DGTL Festival had plenty of talent and sunshine.
With the weather in summer mode and the festival goers in full force, the near packed audience were queuing from the get go. Upon arrival, you are met by a crane over shadowing the site with a huge 30ft DGTL sign gently hanging from the ceiling. After staring at the sign for around 5 minutes, I was met by a stranger who kindly explained that the crane shaft was in fact a hotel as well. Talk about multitasking.
True to form, and something that has become a festival normality these days, was the annoying but somewhat self explanatory plastic coins that littler your pockets. The little nuggets definitely cause less chaos at the bar, but they are so easy to lose. Further more, it was evident that the organisers had gone all out on considering the food installments. There was a nice mix of health and stodgy outlets covering most of your needs.
Musically, they tried to cover all bases with six tents portraying different genres of house, techno, bass and breaks. My friends and I gave The Red Bull arena some serious attention, as the line up consisting of two personal favourites, Axel Boman and Midland. Bowman cut up a serious mix of melody and groove within his set, while Midland took a heavier stance on proceedings with a more bass heavy fair. With a packed audience to boot, he never let down the ravers and offered some hands in the air drops on the crowd.
Kompakt held the main arena for the show, with Michael Mayer performing a somewhat early set. Kompakt, who are well known for their sultry, no nonsense efforts, glided through the whole afternoon and evening with some serious clout. Kolsch and Gui Boratto finished off the evening with heavier, crowd pleasing techno, with Gui performing a live show and Kolsch rounding off the night perfectly.
Other shining lights on the Saturday were the Crew Love team, who literally parked their tour bus outside the festival. The disco dons of Wolf+Lamb, Soul Clap, Tanner Ross and co., threw the rule book out of the window and played back-to-back all night. Taking the edge off the heavier styles flowing through the other tents, it was nice to have the Crew Love team in tow to relax the vibe.
Sunday set a different tone. With the weather still on our side, the crowd poured in for a second day early doors to soak up all the rays. Innvervisions had a huge line up with Mano Le Tough playing a day time set to to what was a full arena from start to finish. Of course Dixon and Ame took most of the credit with their sublime music knowledge, but support from Mano made it more plausible to be in there for nearly the whole afternoon.
Red Bull once again had well programmed line up, from KiNK laying down his live show with serious effect, to Floating Points and his rotary mixer collating the best in disco and house, it was a shear joy to be in that aircraft hanger all weekend. Skream rounded the night off after solid performance from Huxley.
Over in the main arena, Hot Since 82, fresh from his Coachella outing, flew straight in to perform an early evening slot. Jamie Jones took over leading into the night with an energy filled curation of tech driven funk, swiftly followed by Pan Pot, who rounded off the whole show with some German enthused techno cuts.
Its true to say that DGTL, alongside many other festivals of similar size in Amsterdam, really do push the boundaries and leave no stone unturned, and with the weather on our side, spirits couldn't have been higher.