One of Thursday’s highlights is ADE Live, a festival-curated showcase focusing on the best of up-and-coming electronic acts for the sole purpose of discovering the hidden gems. Tonight the Live showcase takes place at the Melkweg (Dutch for Milky Way), a multi-level cultural and music venue in the heart of Amsterdam’s nightlife square, just off the Lijnbaansgracht canal (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?).

Feeling a bit more at home we find our way into the venue. Step 1: locate lockers, put away the warm stuff. Step 2: get a beer. Step 3: find a good vantage point.

Upstairs UK’s Catching Flies (real name George King) is patiently warming up the room. King’s music takes inspiration in a variety of genres from jazz and soul, to house and electronica. Since entering the music scene Catching Flies toured as support for Bonobo and played shows with the likes of ODESZA and Submotion Orchestra. His music is melodic, fluid, with minimal vocals, and some tracks, like “Stay Forever,” are visibly reminiscent of early Odessa, while his remix of “Mt. Wolf’s “Life Size Ghosts” creates an almost religious experience.

Somewhere downstairs, in a slightly larger room called the Oz, UK-based Grammy-winning producer and composer William Phillips is gathering the new arrivals: “Hello Amsterdam, my name is Tourist.” A few cheers passed through the crowd. Tourist’s newest album Wild is dropping tomorrow (October 18th) via Monday Records so the timing of this show is quite opportunistic. In Phillips’ own words Wild is an album in which he tried to “set aside self-doubts” thus producing in a much more liberating way. The album, played out almost in full during the show, features sampled vocals, gentle emotive piano lines, and deep arpeggios that encompass the room in its entirety as the melodies grow louder and more pronounced (check out “Elixir” and “Bunny”).

Overlapping the Tourist set, in the biggest room across the hallway, is Apparat (real name Sascha Ring) and his very atmospheric 4-piece band. Thin, angled fluorescent lights hung across the stage, blinking, creating an incredibly moody atmosphere while Apparat is working through his latest studio album LP5. Playing a mix of string instruments, singing, and occasionally interacting with the band (who were also skilled in a variety of instruments), Sascha showcased his unique flavor of melancholic techno and deep orchestral pop ballads, taking the audience on a journey packed with dark fragmented twists and dramatic turns (press play for “Dawan” and “Caronte”).

Amsterdam proper is not a particularly large city and can be easily walked but a quick tram can take you across town to the Central Station with a lot less precipitation. Here, between the trains, buses, and ferries, down a wide staircase into a large, low ceiling room, is Lil’ Amsterdam, which by all definition feels like an underground nightclub. It is dark, hot AF, smells funny, and you need tokens for everything including the bathroom (entry into which earns you another stamp on the already marked up arm).

Step 1: locate lockers, put away the wet stuff. Step 2: buy tokens, hydrate. Step 3: gently find my way to the front of the stage and put those fancy earplugs to work (one must not forget the good advice of public messaging: protect your ears).

This evening’s programming at Lil’ Amsterdam is brought to us by Audio Obscura, an event organization “born out of love for underground electronic music” on a mission to bring people together in the most iconic historical venues of the world. Through the packed dancing crowd, at the back of the dance floor area, is the German house pioneer Danilo Plessow, aka Motor City Drum Ensemble (MCDE). Inspired by the sounds of Detroit and Chicago house, MCDE spins soul-infused house and techno. Danilo is visibly comfortable on stage: this deck is his home, these people are his people (even if they followed someone in they are fans now), and this inadequately sound-proofed room is a perfect space for the beats to bounce of (“Raw Cuts #3” is a great flavor sample).

Unlike many other festivals around the world, here in Amsterdam, the headliners seemed to go on early at club night events. Admittedly, early still means 1, 2 or 3 am but given that the parties go on till sunrise one can certainly appreciate that their favorite musicians are on at the time of night when you can still form complex sentences, leaving just enough time for a healthy nap before starting it all over again.

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But navigating Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) can be an overwhelming experience. One can be completely aware of the fact that there are twenty-five hundred artists participating, and still be perplexed and overwhelmed by the logistics and scheduling whilst navigating the countless canals of the city. The program published on the ADE website is quite detailed, but missing a couple of essential pieces: set times and a digital venue map. Having only start and end times of each individual showcase (each lasting anywhere between 4 and 10 hours), first day of the festival is spent frantically trying to figure out the inner workings of, well, everything – locations, times, entry logistics, transit options (is Uber faster than walking? Short answer: No).

A glass of wine at one of the networking events will ease the stress of planning and smooth the transition into the night which, for this team, begun at the W Amsterdam with BROBOT, an American house music label founded by DJ and Producer Junior Sanchez. BROBOT artist range is quite eclectic and the team showcased that spectacular variety tonight with the likes of Blaqwell, Hiroko Yamamura, Todd Terry, and Junior Sanchez himself (to name a few) on the decks. The room is packed with a relaxed crowd, sprawling on abstract lounge seats drinking Red Bull and Heineken, while a smaller group is crowding by the DJ forming a mini dance pit. BROBOT crew walked us into the night with a wide range of remixes, from Missy Elliott’s “I’m Really Hot” to Moska’s “This Is House,” naturally sprinkled with some disco.

This all doesn’t seem so hard any more, but that could be the second (third?) Red Bull talking.

Somewhere between the canals a yellow ADE flag pole calls attention to Feijoa, a small corner bar with a spillover patio where a loud crowd is cooling down while smoking cigarets, leaning on shaky patio tables, and spilling beer on the ground. Some music could be heard through the door which, each time it opens is promptly shut by the bouncer who, in a very similar fashion, shut the door behind us, thus pushing us both into the mosh pit that the entire bar seemed to have become. On the decks: Germany’s Rauschhaus followed by Soul Button, from Plaisirs Sonores Records. Packed like sardines, leaning on walls, performing acrobatics while reaching for the bar, and fanning themselves while dancing people in this room were boiling in contagiously euphoric energy.

Many of city’s concert venues’ programming is split in two parts: evening showcase and club night. Paradiso, arguably one of the best live music spots in Amsterdam, was one of such venues and was promptly cleared out after ADE Live for a club night event featuring Hayden James on his Between Us tour. After a brief wait in the club entry line, the tail end of the lineup was let in just in time for Hayden James, who was already bathing in applause and cheerful shouts.

To most people, at least in North America, Hayden is an up-and-coming producer who makes melodic summer house (following in the footsteps of Flume, his fellow Future Classic artist). This evening, however, we got to see a whole new side of Hayden James – darker, heavier, deeper house side that raised the temperature all the way through to the back of the balcony with bangers like Duke Dumont’s “Red Light Green Light” and Hayden James originals. Hayden’s stage is in part a performance floor, wrapping around him like a glowing marquee box. Two long-legged dancers walked out just behind him, whipping their long skirts while energized, young crowd continued to cheer almost non-stop through the night.

Walking across the venue a mixed cloud of smoke and stage fog drifts down the hallways like a settling storm – there are covered heated smoking rooms, but not everyone chooses to obey the privileges of such conveniences. Club nights like these draw a younger crowd and, naturally, a lot of tourists. People (wrongly so) treat Amsterdam as a sin city, where you can let your freak flag fly and try all things new because here, in the city of red lights, it is okay. But while Amsterdam admittedly is a very liberal city and has been so for many decades, the truth is, locals are very calm and classy about their cannabis (and other drug) intake and a lot of prohibitive rules are still at play when it comes to public consumption. All throughout the city and festival grounds “Celebrate Safe” posters are taped to the walls, doors, and even displayed in bus shelters: think for yourself, care about others; don’t push your limits, take your time to chill, protect your ears, always have safe sex. “Pace yourself: eat, sleep, rave.” I’ve never read that statement in the context of safe partying guidelines before, but it makes sense. Although, Fat Boy Slim probably didn’t think he wrote a timeless party motto back in 2013, whatever the context might be.

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