It has been almost two years since Black Box started hosting the Wednesday nights at Studio 80. With continuous growth in visitors, Black Box provides a clear example that clubbing isn’t just a weekend thing anymore. With their second birthday coming up on September 13th it seems just about the perfect time to review the past year and, of course, to look forward to the coming one.
Over the past two years Black Box has been a constant growing factor in the Amsterdam club scene. Starting off with a focus on slow, sexy, at times even poppy deephouse, think Maceo Plex and the like, it has now reached maturity and become more of an all-round deephouse night. “One week the music is more dubby-oriented and the next it’s more disco or progressive. We encourage DJ’s to play their own sound and show what they’re made of, as long as it’s deephouse related”, according to organizer Milan Meyberg.
A part of Black Box’ success might be that it hasn’t been focusing on big names in the scene. As long as a DJ has a good musical taste and potential, there is a chance that sooner or later he or she will do a set at Black Box. In the past year DJ’s like Kevin Duane, Raaf & Absurd and David Leese are amongst a couple of next generation DJ’s that played at Black Box and they are now popping up all over the Amsterdam deephouse scene. David Leese even won the prestigious Pioneer DJ contest, resulting in a gig at Loveland festival, some time ago.
But Black Box is not just a new talent night; it has rapidly gained respect amongst the more established names as well. DJ’s like Aron Friedman and Eric de Man have been amongst the regulars to play at Black Box. According to Meyberg it’s the result of Black Box’ friendly, open atmosphere and it just being an immense fun night to perform at. It all climaxed in a mystery guest appearance and blistering party by US house and disco veteran DJ Kon a few weeks ago.
With the number of visitors still rising every week, Black box has a very promising start for its third year indeed, and we might see a lot more live sets being programmed in the coming season. Or as Meyberg puts it: “Last week at our EP release party we did a very special DJ b2b Live session set, which was amazing. I’d love to do more things like that. Maybe I’ll do a liveset myself sometime. Black box will basically stay the same though, a fun club night, focusing on quality deephouse and ditto DJ’s.”
Black Box will celebrate its second birthday on September 13th at Studio 80. Which will be on a Friday, by way of exception, since Black Box will continue to be ‘The’ Wednesday club night in Amsterdam. Whereas the one-year anniversary featured headliners Sam Russo and Matt Tollfrey, this year we’ll see DJ/Producer Shenoda running the party. The choice for Shenoda as a headliner is typically in line with the Black Box philosophy: he might be relatively unknown to the main public, but great things are expected from this talent in the coming year. His deep and groovy sound is bound to lift off somewhere in the next year, or in Meybergs words: “I closed my set at Welcome To The Future Festival with one of his tracks and it blew the roof off (figuratively speaking, because there wasn’t one), this guy is gonna make it big time!”
The second area during this two-year celebration will be the domain of some of Amsterdam’s finest ‘deephouse’ talents: Deep House Amsterdam’s own PONY and Kevin Duane to be complimented with the talented Levi Verspeek. So it doesn’t matter what stage you’re at, you will be dancing, front row, right next to us.
Shenoda | PONY | Milan Meyberg | Kevin Duane | Levi Verspeek
September 13th | 23:00 – 05:00 | Studio 80, Amsterdam | Black Box 2 YR Anniversary | Tickets
