Places · 12 picks · Wed to Sun
A church in an attic, a prison boiler room, a train at sunrise: twelve rooms worth the trip on their own.
Most of ADE happens in clubs you could find any week of the year. These twelve rooms you can't: a church hidden in a canal house, a chapel, a former prison, a train, two floors at the top of the A'DAM Tower. We picked the one night in each where the music suits the room.
By Songpot desk · from the ADE programme, our venue guide and artist notes
A DJ in a church that was built to stay hidden.
Slimfit usually plays hard and all over the map: emotional techno, bubbling, post-club. Up in the museum's attic church it becomes a live-electronics piece built from classical fragments and ancestral rhythms, part of their installation Opacity in the Pantheon show. Three evenings, a small room: book early.
For fans of Bashkka
Afro house, eleven floors above Centraal.
Percussion-led house that keeps moving without getting heavy: AFU's warm, tech-leaning grooves, Atmos Blaq's darker Soweto stabs, and CIZA bringing amapiano log drums and pop hooks. The organisers say their first edition drew over 1,000 people, so expect a full terrace. The listing still said lineup TBA when we checked.
For fans of Black Coffee, Keinemusik
A label night in an 1888 chapel, open to close.
NTO plays piano-led melodic techno with big emotional lifts; Acid Arab bring acid lines, dabke rhythms and Arabic vocal hooks; Mandragora takes it somewhere much faster, into melodic psytrance. The listing was down to its last 200 tickets when we indexed it.
For fans of Ben Böhmer, Worakls
The WHP turns 20, sixteen floors up.
Fast, swinging UK club music in a penthouse that only opens for the odd party: Salute's garage drums and bright vocal hooks, Malugi's pumping high-speed house, HAAi's percussive, jagged techno, and bebe bad running electro into drum & bass.
For fans of Interplanetary Criminal, Kettama
Egyptian film soundtracks, without the films.
Disco Arabesquo digs through vinyl and cassettes from Egyptian cinema of the 70s to the 90s: warm, sample-heavy grooves with more melody than kick drum. It's a listening session in a small museum pavilion by the Sloterplas, not a dancefloor, with Egyptian snacks from Qibli Bahri.
For fans of Habibi Funk
Twenty years of Klockworks, under red light in a 1960s school.
Ben Klock and DVS1 both play long and physical: tight, rolling techno with deep low end and tension that builds for hours, the kind that locks a room until morning. The Madrid crew around them lean harder, into hardgroove. Stay for the last two hours.
For fans of Marcel Dettmann, Rødhåd
The one ADE morning that isn't a hangover cure.
Disco and house over coffee and cake in the Oude Kerk's old sacristy, inside Amsterdam's oldest building. Meester Moelijk plays feel-good disco and soulful records and talks on the mic between blends; ISIS, Amsterdam techno DJ and Night Mayor, plays it cleaner and closer to Detroit.
For fans of Mr. Scruff
UK garage in the boiler room of an old prison.
Lab54 and Overbruggen's first night together, in the concrete belly of the former Bijlmerbajes: swinging UKG and house from Amy Os and Boss Priester, warm classic-house chords from Dennis Quin, and UK rapper Nafe Smallz on the bill, so expect vocals as well as DJs.
For fans of Kerri Chandler, East End Dubs
Six hours of two DJs who never rush.
Sasha helped define 90s progressive house with Northern Exposure; Patrice Bäumel plays patient, bass-heavy techno. Together: long phrasing, slow builds, controlled release, in daylight under the glass roof and stained glass of a former craft school. Paul Thomas and Mariano Mellino keep the warm-up in the same unhurried lane. The promoter says every edition has sold out.
For fans of Hernan Cattaneo, Nick Warren
Detroit, twenty floors above the IJ.
Carl Craig, the centre of Detroit's second wave and Planet E's founder since 1991, brings machine-funk and suspended chords; Kyle Hall plays raw, jacking house and Matthew Dear hook-led techno. Groove over force, all night, in a small club with the city in the windows.
For fans of Moodymann, Theo Parrish, Jeff Mills
Techno on a train, timed for sunrise.
Budapest promoter IAM Productions' first ADE, in a carriage that leaves Centraal before dawn: Joyhauser's front-loaded kicks and big melodic hooks, Juliet Fox's driving peak-time techno, KAS:ST. It runs to a timetable, so be on the platform, not on your way.
For fans of Charlotte de Witte, Adam Beyer, Amelie Lens
Awakenings on a Sunday afternoon, and it goes fast.
A daytime session that leans trance and hard house, in the steel-and-brick hall of a former sugar factory: DJ Heartstring's candy-bright trance over rolling kicks, CVNTS's bouncy hard house, DJ Gigola's chunky, funky techno.
Times, lineups and tickets are on each event's ADE programme page. Songpot is independent of the festival.