Photo credit /
Tim Buiting
Dekmantel Selectors 2018: Five key performances
- PubblicatiSep 3, 2018
- Parole
- Not even a devastating storm could stop this from being another fantastic five days in Croatia.
- Condividi
- The scene on Saturday night at Dekmantel Selectors wasn't what anyone was expecting. Gales wracked the beachfront stages, waves scooped up over the jetty and lightning flashed on the horizon. All areas were put on standby and every DJ from midnight onward was forced to play each record as if it was their last. The full force of the storm arrived at 4 AM, but lingered with infrequent downpours through to the following evening. "The weather gods," in Dekmantel's words, looked to have delivered a no-confidence vote to their quaint end-of-summer camp.
As one of the most established brands in electronic music, you might assume any Dekmantel project is a ready-made home run. But the third edition of Selectors probably coughed up more challenges than any of their previous festivals—Amsterdam and São Paulo included. Two whole nights at the famed Barbarella's Discotheque were shifted from under the stars into a hastily-constructed marquee. Hunee gamely played four times in 24 hours to cover cancellations. A surprise Bufiman live show was announced, then abandoned—he made it through airport chaos, but his equipment did not. Even the bars grappled with supply issues, with most offering only a local pale ale so repulsive that it became a running joke.
Before the storm brewed, two things struck me as a first-time attendee at The Garden Tisno. The first was how easily everything flows. Any schedule micromanaging melts away once you realise all options are achievable within a moment's stroll. The second was how long a week in Tisno feels. The first record was played at 4 PM on Wednesday and the last sometime as morning broke the following Tuesday. The soundsystems were out of action for just 30 of 135 hours. With boat parties sailing three times daily, a night programme stretching from dusk 'til dawn and ambient sunrise sets thrown in, pacing yourself was key. Placing slo-mo chuggers Willikens & Ivkovic and Phuong-Dan at the mid-marathon point, just as people were starting to flag, and charismatic rising stars like Carista on the final straight to wring the last juice out of the committed, were astute moves.
The scrambled plans could have broken the resolve of an event designed as a jovial getaway, but, in the end, it brought the true character of Selectors into clearer focus. Online commenters thanked Dekmantel for their responsiveness with contingency measures. The festival's strong community spirit—boosted by the modest capacity of around 1700, crowd-level stages designed with minimal furnishing and no artist-only areas—went up a notch, unleashing an impish sense of adventure in the face of the unexpected. The week in Tisno ended up as a reminder not to take life too seriously.
Here are five sets that captured the spirit of Dekmantel Selectors 2018.
DEBONAIR Although the demographic was around 30% British, Selectors' bookings skewed heavily European. As well as more established touring acts, many sets were extended to residents of the continent's best clubs and outlets—Oslo's Jaeger, Rotterdam's BAR and Belgrade's Yugovinyl among them. So it was pleasing to see the first set of the Voodoo stage given over to DEBONAIR, a regular presence in London's landscape today. She was entrusted to get people off their beach towels and onto land to dance. When I arrived, about 20 minutes in, the ground was busy with day-drunk bodies two-stepping in waning sunlight. She set the pace with sharp mid-tempo tracks, occasionally coloured by bursts of guitar squall or oddball sound design, such as Red Axes' "Waiting For A Surprise." The tunes got faster and punchier, arriving at house pumpers like Alcatraz's "Give Me Luv." A model of concentration throughout, only at the very end—to the glorious strains of MA1's funky anthem "I'm Right Here"—did she whip off her sunglasses to beam at the crowd.
Mozhgan & Solar Solar and Mohzgan, who cropped up frequently throughout the festival to support fellow friends, had a magnetism that drew the audience up close to watch through a thick haze of smoke. The joy was palpable. Their range lay between spectral synth cuts and serrated jack tracks. Strange voices would rise up, grappling toward a forgotten home, before being sliced through by a hot knife of acid. All the while, Solar was head-banging and pogoing around so gleefully that he had to keep hoisting his shorts up. He wasn't the only one having a blast.
Batu To lose one headliner in an evening was unfortunate; to lose both was cruel. Following DJ Harvey's no-show, Hunee was drafted in to save the all-night slot at Barbarella's on Friday. Back onsite, Dekmantel took the plunge and replaced Donato Dozzy with someone they'd never booked before, but whose entry into their podcast series had impressed. It paid off: Batu waltzed home with what many heralded as the set of the week. The Timedance boss's quick-fire style is hard to pin down in terms other than energy levels—by midnight, the place was erupting. The previous night's lineup at Voodoo were hanging off the trees, down the front and completely losing it. Over a crushingly loud system, insistent electro was effortlessly threaded through Bristolian bassweight. Ploy's "Ramos," recently out on Timedance, was greeted as fervently as eyebrow-raisers like DJ Lilocox’s "Fronteiras." A play of DJ Mystery's "Speechless" felt especially fitting. Even at Split airport the following Tuesday, this set remained the first thing people struck up conversations about.
DJ Marcelle Anyone seeking solace from Saturday's storm at the sheltered With A View bar might have been perturbed to be greeted by a three-minute distress loop of someone screaming for help. This unique introduction set the tone for a two-hour set that sent a jolt up the weekend's spine. A Dutch lifer, DJ Marcelle was first smitten with the sound and ethos of ramshackle acts like The Raincoats and The Slits during post-punk's heyday. She delivered a similar dose of faster action via a cross-sample of her 20,000-strong record collection, prioritising tracks with nervous rhythms and jagged edges. Cuts by DJ Katapila, Omar Souleyman and Jah Screechy quickly established a carnivalesque atmosphere. It got weirder from there. She navigated a road map of left turns, including one tune that featured cut-up vocals from Whigfield's cheesy anthem "Saturday Night," before ending at the most unlikely final destination: the indie folk artist Scout Niblett's coy cover of "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althea Forrest and Donna Reid.
Tako Each day, two three-hour lunchtime sets at Beach Bar were given over to well-loved characters that orbit Amsterdam's current class of deep-diggers, such as Orpheu The Wizard, Max Abysmal and Jamie Tiller. Last on that bill came the man broadly regarded as the spark that lit the touchpaper for this scene: Red Light Records' cofounder Tako. Come Monday afternoon, the festival needed someone to bring the sunny vibes. Tako took his chance with gusto. I expected to hear some obscure €200 dub or zouk records, but was greeted instead by a goldmine of straight-up feel-good music. It was at once valedictory and victorious. Maurice McGee's "Do I Do" and Sue Chaloner's "Answer My Prayer" piped over the speakers, as seemingly everyone left onsite dragged themselves down to dance. Few shook it as hard as Tako. Between hearty swigs of white wine straight from the bottle, he pulled off a closing run of Happy Mondays' "Hallelujah" into Carly Simon's "Why" into The Cure's "Lullaby," a song I never thought would be given an airing in 30°C heat on a Croatian beach. Air violins raised out the azure water and swooped along. At one moment, a wounded raver floated past on a gigantic inflatable rubber ducky, flashing a weak but purposeful thumbs-up toward the stage.
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