Dekmantel's First Southeast Asia Show Closed With Avalon Emerson's Bali Debut

Dekmantel played its first Southeast Asian show on September 26, at Desa Potato Head in Seminyak, Bali, across two rooms, running from 1pm to 4am. The Amsterdam festival and label has spent years setting the agenda for European house and techno. This was the first time any of it landed in Southeast Asia.

The daytime half happened at Potato Head Beach Club: listening sessions, live Q&As, and a discussion series called Desa Dialogue. When night fell, the bill moved to Klymax, the resort's basement club, for a house, techno, electronica and experimental program that ran until sunrise. Bandwagon Asia described it as a "one-day takeover": daytime programming feeding straight into Klymax's night booth without a break between the two.

Twelve Names, One B2B

The lineup: Avalon Emerson, Ogazón, Soichi Terada (live), Dekmantel Soundsystem, Fafi Abdel Nour, Archie and Bagvs back to back, Danny Satria (live), Dita, Kaazi, Kiwed and Sattle. Dekmantel Soundsystem is Casper van Tielrooij, who co-founded Dekmantel, and Olf van Elden, who records solo as Interstellar Funk. The rest of the touring names flew in from three countries: Fafi Abdel Nour from the Netherlands, Ogazón from Germany, and Soichi Terada from Japan, while Danny Satria played live as the only performer explicitly billed as Indonesian and Kaazi flew in from Australia.

Avalon Emerson closed the night. It was her first show anywhere in Southeast Asia: an American DJ and producer whose sets have run through Berlin's Berghain and California basements alike. Organizers described her closing set as moving through house, techno, new wave and disco, ending a fifteen-hour Balinese beach resort takeover as the sun came up.

The Room Doing the Work

The night side of the bill played through Klymax, the basement discotheque whose sound system DJ Harvey helped design when the club opened on New Year's Eve 2023 with an all-night Harvey set. The room holds about 400 people around a JBL-based quad-stack rig modeled on the Paradise Garage's 1980s system, and Harvey has called the result "the secret sauce" behind the club's "multisensory sound space." On a normal Friday or Saturday its own doors open at 10pm, with entry from IDR 218,000; the resort's Indonesian resident DJs run that regular booth week to week. Dekmantel's own soundsystem project, built for exactly this kind of room, was on the bill by name.

Why Bali, Why Now

Loopliner first reported the booking in mid-August, when Dekmantel and Potato Head framed it as the product of years of back-and-forth between the two teams, not a one-off slot filled for a slow season. One Dekmantel co-founder put it more simply at the time: it started, in their words, as "a friendship... sharing music, sharing spaces." Tickets moved through Megatix in the weeks before the show.

Dekmantel hasn't announced a second Southeast Asia date. Saturday's show is, so far, the only one on the books.

Cover photo, sound system photo and dancefloor photo: Klymax.