Dance music is taking its time again

Recently, Awakenings became the only multi-day festival in the Netherlands to sell out completely well before its kick-off. Elsewhere, ticket sales have been a little less effortless: Lowlands most recently didn’t sell out, while Wildeburg only got there 2 months in advance. Does that fact say something about the state of the festival landscape? Following years of near-guaranteed sell-outs after the pandemic, Dutch audiences seem to be choosing more carefully where their money goes to.

At the same time, another trend has quietly been picking up speed. More and more artists are announcing six-, seven- or even eight-hour sets, perhaps taking inspiration from venues like Thuishaven, where these festival-like all-day sessions have been a regular fixture for years. Benny Rodrigues recently played for almost 12 hours there! Instead of flying across Europe to squeeze four one-hour festival slots into a weekend, artists seem increasingly happy to spend an entire day or night in the same booth, digging deeper into their record bags and taking the crowd somewhere a one-hour set simply can’t. It seems to be less about highlights and reels, and more about the slow burn. Let them cook, right?

Maybe those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Maybe they do. Festival culture has shaped the state of electronic music more than we sometimes realise. Not musically, necessarily, but structurally. If you only have sixty minutes, you don’t have much time to take risks. You need to win people over quickly, especially when half the crowd is still queuing for a drink or wandering over from another stage, late for the lock-in. The festival set became an art form in itself: maximum impact, minimal patience. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that, as some artists are fantastic at it. We’re not judging. But if every set has to feel like the climax of the weekend, what happens to everything in between?

That’s perhaps why longer sets feel so appealing again. They leave room for records that don’t immediately demand attention, for weird dubs found in the depths of the internet or heard at one of those Belgian raves that seemed to go on indefinitely, where DJs had enough time to play things you might never hear again. Longer sets leave room for mistakes, for taking a turn left, or right. The same thing seems to be happening inside clubs. More listening spaces, ambient rooms and places to decompress have quietly started to be added to club’s programs and venues. Not because everyone suddenly wants to spend their Saturday night lying on beanbags listening to whispering sounds and pondering their existence, but because contrast has become valuable again. Intensity only really works when there’s something softer next to it. We can only appreciate sunshine after dark, right?

Perhaps that’s also why clubs continue to offer something festivals simply can’t. You don’t arrive with a checklist of twenty artists you need to catch before midnight. You’re not constantly calculating whether you should stay for another twenty minutes or run to the next stage. You surrender to one room, one massive, clear as day soundsystem and, if you’re lucky, artists who’re not in no rush to get to the big moment.

None of this means festival culture is over. Festivals remain one of the easiest ways to discover new artists, stumble into unexpected sets or spend a weekend with friends you only see on dancefloors. But after five years of the return of festival culture and bigger line-ups, more stages and increasingly packed schedules, it’s worth asking whether we’ve reached another point. Hey, are those warmer, deeper, more minimal sounds we hear again?!