We spend most of the first night in TivoliVredenburg, an enormous complex of five music halls and smaller venues which has been the festival’s de facto central hub for the past ten years. 

The buzzy atmosphere in the foyer instantly turns meditative as we enter for the premiere of Hadra Immersive, a collaboration between the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra and visual artist Arion de Munck. Silhouetted in blue spotlights, a 12-piece ensemble sit facing inwards around a circular pool of water in the centre of the hall, its surface rippling, shimmering and reflecting the vibrations of the orchestra’s harmonising chants and traditional acoustic instrumentation. It’s sublime.

Minutes later upstairs, Kim Gordon is stalking the stage in a cacophony of scuzz coolly intoning on the vacuousness of modern life on Air BnB and evoking genuine menace over the panic-attack beat of Bye Bye. Blackhaine kicks the intensity up another notch, moving like boiling water through a strobe-obliterated, soul-baring set that brings the first night to a climax. 

HiTech goad the crowd into whooping chaos in Pandora, one of TivoliVredenburg’s smallest spaces, MCing, dancing and flitting between ghettotech hybrids at breakneck speed. At one point one of the trio dives into the crowd and wades through bodies to the sound desk to exhort the engineers to turn them up (they oblige).

It would be negligent for any festival – let alone one as international as Le Guess Who? – to not respond to the ongoing genocide and annexation being perpetrated by Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, and expressions of grief, resistance and solidarity abound in the festival’s programme.

Friday afternoon sees Radio Alhara convene Beirut-based musicians Sary Moussa and Abed Kobeissy to perform with Laurence Sammour, tenor of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Their piece, entitled Christmas in Mourning, begins with a solemn reflection and a moment of silence for those killed in Palestine and Lebanon led by Sammour, whose powerful recitations then reverberate around the towering white-washed walls of the Pieterskerk church over Moussa’s thrumming electronics and Kobeissy’s delicate buzuq. The trio’s performance is profoundly, heart-rendingly affecting, and made all the more remarkable for the fact this is the first time they have been able to gather together in person.

During DARKSIDE’s heaving, atmospheric set later that evening, Nicolas Jaar pauses to decry the violence in Palestine. Jaar reflects on Christmas in Mourning, recalling seeing one of Le Guess Who?’s organising team moved to tears by the show as chants of “Free Palestine” ring out from the audience. It’s a poignant moment, and one that’s also illustrative of another consequence of the festival’s collaborative, free-flowing approach: the barrier between the festival audience, performers, and crew is more or less completely dissolved here. 

Most artists seem to stay the duration of the weekend, and can be seen chatting on terraces, scrolling through the timetable outside venues and popping up on each others’ sets. Interested, un-stressed volunteers come off shift and head straight to the balconies of TivoliVredenburg’s venues to enjoy the fruits of their labour. There are no garish brand activations to pull focus from what’s happening on stage. The vibe is simultaneously conscientious and carefree – everyone seeing, hearing and feeling together.

There’s plenty of joy, too: Shabjdeed & Al Nather’s deft double-time rapping gets a rapturous response from the bouncing crowd, and Still House Plants’ intimate, math-y swagger calls to mind Kurt Cobain’s description of The Raincoats (“rather than listening to them I feel like I’m listening in on them.”) They exchange nods and smiles, falling in and out of time with one another, languid and drum-tight at the same time. A quick hop on the metro takes us downtown to De Helling, where Lord Spikeheart bounds onto stage through a curtain of strobe and haze, immediately plunging the venue’s cosy main room into a brutal maelstrom of thundering kicks and guttural vocals, then it’s back to the centre for RP Boo, who rocks canalside sweatbox BASIS, beaming through an unrelenting rain of footwork heaters. 

Come Saturday, taking cues from a blurry photo of a new friend’s timetable from the previous night, we amble down to the Jacobikerk church to check out Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri, encountering one of the most awe-inspiring performances of the weekend. The pair resonate the cavernous vaulted ceiling of the Jacobikerk with immense-sounding celestial drones that seem to stretch off into infinity. 

Later on, Kevin Richard Martin and KMRU occupy the same stage, but mine very different sonic territory. Hooded up and silhouetted by red lights against the gothic choir screen, they are in pure summoning mode, barely glancing at each other beneath a fog of static and breathy incantations from KMRU. The pews are full and so a brave few sprawl on the vibrating flagstone floor, which feels like it might crater at any moment. 

Mabe Fratti’s collaboration with London-based vocal group SHARDS feels heavenly by comparison. The configuration (another first-time meeting) cover an immense range, sometimes centering Fratti’s crystalline vocals over razor-sharp drums, and at others allowing guitarist Hector Tosta a.k.a. i la Católica’s guitar shredding to come to the fore. SHARDS’ harmonising voices become a fourth instrument in the mix, swirling lustrously with the timbre of their bandleader’s cello.

Cello figures into Buenos Aires experimental rock four-piece Blanco Teta’s late-night appearance, albeit in a completely different way – Violeta García twists and turns her instrument through a bank of distortion pedals, screaming along with Josefina Barreix as they rage through a full-throttle, full-feral set in the backroom of Ekko.  

Arooj Aftab’s Sunday evening performance in Tivoli’s main hall is one of the last of the festival, and has the weary, contented emotional weight of a closing set but none of the pomp and sincerity. In between swirling, mesmeric jams, she hands out whisky shots to the front row, ribs European audiences for exoticising her (“if you’re having a transcendental, meditative experience, you’re being racist”), and extends generous thanks to the festival organisers, the audience, and the artists she’s invited to perform. Aftab’s voice and her band’s musicianship are breathtaking on their own, but there’s an intimacy, a warmth, an un-self-seriousness that makes the whole experience shimmer that bit more. 

It’s abundantly clear how much work goes into the creation of Le Guess Who? – from the vast programme, to their commitment to platforming non-Western artists in the face of cruel and arcane visa processes, down to the finest of details – this is a labour of love, but very much still a labour. Happily, the results are magnificent. 

Le Guess Who? is everything a modern music festival ought to be – cosmopolitan, collaborative, boundlessly ambitious, challenging in its offering and yet completely unpretentious. This one’s special.