Dekmantel Soundsystem is the travelling embodiment of a particular Amsterdam idea, that selectors come first and history moves forward with the glue of groove holding everything together. In its current configuration—Casper Tielrooij paired with Interstellar Funk (Olf van Elden)—the duo continues to read like an ongoing editorial session for the wider Dekmantel project, with its internationally renowned label, festivals, and offshoots all folded into a single, high-music IQ dancefloor conversation. On Saturday, September 13, Control gets to witness the debut of Dekmantel Soundsystem's exciting new formation for one special all night long set.
It should be noted that Dekmantel Soundsystem is a DJ unit, not a studio alias; original releases and remixes sit with Interstellar Funk’s solo work. However, the broader Dekmantel Soundsystem arc tracks back to 2007, when Tielrooij and Thomas Martojo began smuggling Detroit/Chicago grammar into a Netherlands dominated by minimal, EDM, and progressive house. A label followed in 2009, and a multi-day festival in the expansive greenery of the Amsterdamse Bos arrived in 2013. Those early milestones paved the way as an operating system for when Dekmantel Soundsystem play. This decidedly Amsterdam approach is constant without being in-your-face. After all, this is a city where residents think in terms of seasons; record shops function like musical seminars; radio shows are like the deep diaries of a dance music capital. You can hear this in how they open: a slow clearing of head noise so the first pattern can land. And you hear it in how they close: controlled pressure; no compulsory “one more tune.” In between, everything is a matter of selector hospitality.
On paper, “genre-spanning” is a bit of a PR cliché these days, but in practice, Dekmantel Soundsystem sets hold a legible grammar that indeed spans style, era, and feeling. Casper supplies the long vector from deep house to dubwise techno to psychedelic jack built with the patience and confidence of a seasoned veteran. Interstellar Funk supplies angle and torque through EBM/wave/electro contour and wiry machine funk. All this provides an intentional friction, re-gridding bodies without derailing rooms.
Casper’s public myth is straightforward: a teenage club kid who built a reputation as the steady hand who sets the night's tone. That temperament is what made Dekmantel’s early parties coherent and still anchors the Soundsystem now. He came up loving Midwestern American House but never as a purist, as Disco phrasing, dub’s subtractive logic and European psychedelia all figure into the way he paces a room. What you also see over the past two years or so is a visible curatorial role in the festival’s programming and club tours. The Dekmantel Club Tour format, for instance, often frames solo statements (Interstellar Funk, Casper) around a B2B that serves as a portable micro-Dekmantel festival experience.
Olf’s decade-plus with the crew is a narrative on its own. A Rush Hour apprenticeship and residency at seminal Amsterdam spaces Trouw and De School widened his ear beyond house/techno orthodoxy, with his productions and labels crystallizing those edges. Tape Records (2012) emerged when he and friends simply wanted to issue Deniro’s unreleased tracks; Artificial Dance (2017, distributed by Rush Hour) became the outlet for left-of-centre synth, wave, industrial and EBM, and the 2020 compilation Artificial Dancers – Waves of Synth is a map of that world. His album Into The Echo (Dekmantel, 2022) is the studio twin to his DJ signature: dark, nervous electro and ambient breakouts.
What distinguishes Dekmantel Soundsystem as a duo is coherence. Thousands of small choices convert range into authorship, leaving space for the unknown to hit. You can hear the audience’s click of trust when a left turn takes. That click is their signature. If you want concrete listening cues, hear how an Interstellar Funk cut like “House Train” (Voyage Direct, 2013) still slides into lower-mid passages, or how hardware-led melodies from his catalogue can anchor synth-forward peaks without ostentation. None of these moves require talk of stages or rosters; they read directly on the floor as decisions made by artists who trust the room, and the room trusts them.
Strip away mythology, and their value is simple. Dekmantel Soundsystem make audiences feel taken care of. Hosts first, headliners as needed, they never behave like “brand DJs” or present the “bit of everything” approach. Instead, they provide the primary tools—history, context, risk—for making dancefloor time well spent. Two people, one room, a chain of sensible, yet maverick musical choices. That’s not brand posturing, but an artistic method that lends the Dekmantel Soundsystem name the international weight it holds.
