Dekmantel São Paulo: "It's a special place to do a festival"

Earlier this week, Dutch party squad and record label Dekmantel announced a festival in São Paulo. It's big news from an underground dance music institution that's fast become known for throwing some of the best events in the world.

This year saw the fourth edition of its Amsterdam weekender take place as well as the launch of Selectors at The Garden in Croatia. That's not to mention the countless raves they've thrown in Holland. Setting up camp in Brazil will see the crew link with locals to promote new talent and legendary figures, taking the Dekmantel vibe to the other side of the world. And of course it'll be held in a suitably mindblowing location.

We caught up with Dekmantel co-foudner Matthijs Theben Terville to find out about festival and label movements and the finer details of the São Paulo event...

First of all, tell us a little bit about the year so far. The Amsterdam event was really well received and you just launched Selectors, how did that go?

It has been really great to see what we’ve managed to accomplish with the Amsterdam festival in the past four years. We have now reached an ideal size that allows us to put together a respectable production, with accompanying bookings, yet we can still create an atmosphere that feels intimate in a way. And the opening day specifically was an amazing eye opener this year. We added three new venues, and with the concerts programmed there we were really able to further deepen the program and explore all of our musical interests.

And as much as we’ve enjoyed seeing the main festival transform more and more into what we ideally had in mind when starting it, we somehow also felt a strong urge to set-up something slightly different. We thought it would be nice to organize a mini festival as well, where, together with all our friends, we would get to see some of our favorite DJs in a truly idyllic setting. We found the ideal location with The Garden site at the Adriatic coast in Croatia, and looking back the feedback has been overwhelming to say the least. If anything, it has given us even more energy to carry on doing the things we really love.

In a very short space of time you’ve managed to establish a really strong ethos which comes down to amazing artists, great curation and interesting locations. Did you expect things to take off like they have?

That’s an interesting question. Sometimes we try to envision together what we will be doing a couple of years from now. But it always turns out that the simple truth is that we just don’t really have a clue what the future has in store for us. Longterm planning may be useful for some, but for us it works much better to take things as they come and to try and make the best out of what we’re doing in the moment.

What about the releases, you’ve put out a lot this year, what else have you got coming up before the end of 2016?

We’ve without a doubt had the best year ever so far with the label, and we even have a lot more coming up which we can’t wait to have people listen to. It is nice that we’ve found a way to export some of Dekmantel Festival’s characteristics to the label with the Selectors compilation series and the UFO sub-label. And it has been great to put out some of our best releases by old friends and new, talented artists. Starting with Makam’s new album, the next months will see an abundance of key releases by Dutch producers. This is something that we are especially excited about as we’ve known these guys since we all were in our early 20s. It’s amazing to see them do so well, while at the same time we can now be of a real benefit to them with the label.

So you’re launching a festival In São Paulo, Brazil as your next big event. What made you choose Brazil?

This year São Paulo was one of our first destinations with the series of label showcases we did all around the world. The party was amazing, and we spent two weeks extra hanging out with the Gop Tun crew. We had great fun, really got to enjoy the amazing city, but we also found out that we shared a lot of similar interests with these guys. We had an honest and genuine chemistry together, talked about music for hours. Very organically we came up with the idea to do Dekmantel festival in São Paulo. One thing lead to another and on our second trip the guys from Gop Tun showed us a venue that we were instantly sold on. The response on our announcement last Tuesday has been rather enormous and I guess you could say it shows as well that many Paulistanos – and Brazilians in general, for that matter – have been waiting for such a festival for a long time.

What about the location? You mentioned it being like a concrete jungle, what sort of venues and spaces can we expect? Will you be hosting day and night events?

Yes, we’ll be doing two days and two nights. The day venue is called the Jockey Club and it’s a hippodrome in the Western part of São Paulo. The buildings were founded in the late 19^th century but they have that typical late 30s Brazilian chic quality. Combined with the greenery surrounding the site it makes for a pretty special place to be doing a festival!

Fabriketa, where we will do the night programs is very different. It’s an old factory in the district of Bras and it has a very raw feeling to it, we will be using the open-air courtyard on both nights.

Do you have any ideas about capacity and pricing? Will it be an affordable and easily-accessible event for people in Brazil?

I think we always try to be reasonably priced across all of our events. In terms of capacity, it’s important, especially in the first year and at a new location, to keep everything as intimate as possible, so we’re aiming for just 4000 people a day (which is almost the same as the first edition of the festival in Amsterdam). From there we’ll take things step-by-step as we always do.

Without revealing too much will the line-up be similar to the other events? The mix of Dekmantel affiliates and big house and techno names has always worked well. Will there be more of a focus on Brazilian artists.

One of the reasons we fell in love with São Paulo, is of course the Brazilian music culture. We’re all big fans of all the older music, so you'll find Hermeto Pascoal and Azymuth on the line-up as proof for this, but we also got to know the talented local scene. Next to that we’re really happy that big names as Nicolas Jaar, Jeff Mills, Nina Kraviz, and Moodymann are joining us for this first edition and of course we also brought a couple of label artists like Palms Trax, Young Marco, and Fatima Yamaha.

Is there anything else that you’ll be doing to support the local community or to particularly engage with the local scene?

During the festival in São Paulo we’ll be of course collaborating with local artists, musicians and promoters. We want to give talent a chance on our festival and we want to give music from the older days a place as well. I think it’s going to be a great marriage.

Dekmantel São Paulo takes place in February 2017. Info and tickets here