Warehouse Elementenstraat

Sixty-one nights that forged gabber

Between April 1992 and May 1993, the old peanut factory at Elementenstraat 25 was the weekend headquarters of Multigroove. Ilja Reiman and his team organized 61 illegal raves in the Westelijk Havengebied of Amsterdam. From the booth, The Prophet, Buzz Fuzz, Gizmo, Dano, and Flamman & Abraxas pushed a raw hardcore that ended up solidifying the Dutch gabber sound. The audience returned every Saturday and turned those warehouses into a community that lived the genre inside and outside the walls.

May 15th and twenty years of silence

On May 15, 1993, the police raided the venue during an undercover operation. They arrested founders and DJs, and the venue closed overnight. For two weeks, followers held vigils at the doors. The building disappeared from the Amsterdam nightlife map for almost two decades and remained a legend among those who had been there.

Modular concrete for three thousand bodies

Duncan Stutterheim, who had experienced his first rave on that dance floor, bought the property and, between 2012 and 2014, emptied the factory to rebuild it as a modular concrete labyrinth: several reconfigurable rooms, redone acoustics, and a Funktion-One system installed after comparing four brands. The venue doubled in size to a capacity of 3,000 people and went from a raw warehouse to a clubbing home on an indoor festival scale. On November 26, 2016, Multigroove returned for the first time since the raid for an anniversary rave.

ADE, Reaktor, and the pulse of the dance floor

Since 2014, the venue has become a central piece of the Amsterdam underground. It hosts four-day cycles during the Amsterdam Dance Event, sunrises for Breakfast Club and Is Burning, and weekends of uncompromising techno like Katharsis and Unpolished by Reaktor, in addition to dates by Hyte, Welcome to the Future indoor, or Luciano & Friends. The interior is reconfigured according to the event: club intimacy in one room, festival sensation in the next. There are lockers, a card-only bar, and an outdoor smoking area; the Isolatorweg metro is just a few minutes away. The calendar is event-based, with habitual closing around 6:00 AM.