Words: Nika Bogdanic
Last weekend, the acclaimed Dutch festival took over Barcelona’s Parc del Fòrum for the fourth year in a row. Four different stages; Amp, Modular, Generator and Frequency occupied this famous festival venue, while the organisation brought some of the most interesting names in the underground electronic music scene. As every year, the festival was not exclusively about electronic music, but also about sustainability, technological innovations and conceptual art.
Every stage was dedicated to a different underground electronic music genre. While the Generator stage was almost exclusively generating fierce techno sets, Amp and Modular hosted the headliners of the festival, such as Dixon, Solomun, Maceo Plex and DJ Koze. Here are some of the festival’s highlights from each stage.
AMP
Even though we didn’t expect to see him at DGTL, Black Coffee’s performance was definitely one of the best ones at this year’s edition. He started slow, mixing soulful chords with a wistful vocal and staying low-key. He slowly built his mixture of vocal-heavy house and by the time he dropped Kölsch’s anthemic remix of London Grammar’s ‘Hell To The Liars’, the crowd went completely crazy.
MODULAR
Modular hosted stars such as DJ Tennis, Dixon, DJ Koze and Maceo Plex. But in our opinion, none of these performances could be considered as highlights of the festival. Meanwhile, Adriatique, a Swiss duo consisting of Adrian Shala and Adrian Schweizer, ruled the decks at Modular like no one else at the festival. Their hypnotic and dark, yet very danceable set, created a fantastic atmosphere, in which most of the people who haven’t heard of them before spent Shazaming their tracks and figuring out who they were.
GENERATOR
The Generator stage was reserved for fierce techno beats both on Friday and Saturday. Even though it might not have been the best performance nor the most important one, FJAKK really caught our attention. FJAAK is an electronic music trio from Berlin, who grew up together and began to create all types of music made with microphones, guitars and drums in a dark, chaotic and dirty cellar at quite an early age. After getting in touch with the Berlin underground techno scene, their days and nights started being all about music. If you still haven’t, you should definitely give them a listen.
FREQUENCY
Frequency, a stage dedicated not just to beats but to melody as well might have been where we had the most fun. The stage was not too big nor too small, the sound was amazing and there were some pretty awesome performances. Tuff City Kids, consisting of Gerd Janson and Phillip Lauer, two Frankfurt-area veterans known for melody-rich house, had an outstanding and very danceable live set on Friday evening. The same night, an intense b2b between Ben UFO and Job Jobse set both the stage and the dancefloor on fire. Saturday was reserved Detroit Swindle’s live set, a b2b between Fort Romeau and Pional and Motor City Drum Ensemble. However, we were most impressed by the fabulous miss Peggy Gou, her relaxed vibe and colorful set.
If you’re a DGTL fan like we are, make sure to get DGTLized in Tel Aviv on September 29th 2018.