DEKMANTEL 2025
DEKMANTEL 2025
Dekmantel Festival is a three day festival in Amsterdam’s BOS park with some of electronic music’s most forward thinking artists playing on custom high fidelity sound systems. This was my first time going to the festival and I brought along a point and shoot to photograph the scenes and textures of the festival.
On day 1, Palms Trax (Left) and Floating Points (right) played a 10 hour set together at the Greenhouse stage using Floating Points’ custom designed Sunflower Sound System. Their marathon set consisted of all kinds of sounds from old disco vinyl records to contemporary electronic music. This was my favorite set of the festival, the unique sound system combined with their track selection created an unparalleled vibe that was hard to step away from.
The view from the back of the Selectors stage. This is where artists play long form groovy house sets. Highlights for me were Ogazón, DJ Dustin b2b Fred P, and Shanti Celeste.
One of Dekmantel’s core values is sustainability and that can even be seen in the food options available at the festival. All the food is either vegetarian or vegan. This was the second best festival food I’ve had, with Coachella coming in first place. My favorites were the coffee shop and kimchi burger stand, though I didn’t get around to trying this pizza place. Everything was fresh and made on site.
DJ Nobu commanding the iconic Radar stage. If you’ve ever watched a Dekmantel set on YouTube, this is the stage that it took place. Over the years it has been in partnership with HOR and Boiler Room, but now is run by Dekmantel themselves and has evolved into a three-level stage that still feels intimate. This is the only stage that gets live streamed and uploaded to YouTube. During peak times there was a line to enter the stage area.
The final glow of day light fading as day 1 comes to an end. With Dekmantel happening right at the beginning of August, the sun doesn’t fully set until around 10pm with the festival ending at 11pm. This means only one hour of darkness, I do wish we had a few extra hours since a lot of the stage designs shine at night. This was one of the only downsides to the festival.
The loop, Dekmantel’s main stage. I spent most of my day 2 here since the music was too hard to step away from.
The final moment’s of Call Super’s set as he passes it off to Honey Dijon. Call Super’s set was my favorite of the weekend and during the last hour or so of it started raining, but not an unbearable amount and it added to the vibes of the festival.