Hidde van Wee

Amersfoort, not Amsterdam

Hidde van Wee works out of Amersfoort rather than the Amsterdam club belt, and the distance shows in how he built a career: not by being seen in the right rooms, but by sending music until the music travelled instead. The records that carry his name are described consistently by the labels releasing them as house shaped by UK garage and electro — swung drums, bass that moves rather than sits, and melodic material that behaves like a hook without ever quite resolving into one.

The Dutch circuit gave him his early rooms. Shelter, Thuishaven and Bret in Amsterdam, Toffler in Rotterdam, and Basis, where a set filmed for the NEED label caught him playing his own unreleased 'Day After Tomorrow' to a full floor. Those are small and mid-sized underground venues with resident cultures, which tends to mean long sets and audiences who will let a DJ take a slow route. It is the training that explains the shape of what he does now.

The Up The Stuss door

The break came through Chris Stussy's Up The Stuss, one of the more carefully gated labels in European minimal house, which put out van Wee's debut EP, 'Aspire To Inspire'. Four tracks — the title piece, 'Perception Of Swing', 'Motion' and 'Metamorph' — pulled deep house through electro, garage and minimal without settling on any of them. It arrived with a backstory that is unusually honest about how hard the first record is when the label matters that much.

Asked how he approached it, van Wee said he began by trying to write something that would fit the imprint precisely, and that the attempt failed. Only when he stopped aiming at the label and made music freely did the EP come together. The title had been sitting in his files for two years before it became a record — written originally as a note to himself during a stretch when nothing much was happening. He has also said he wants tracks that survive outside a club, not only inside one, which is an ambition a lot of minimal producers state and rather fewer act on.

By then he already had releases behind him on HOME//GRXWN and on Sidney Charles's Heavy House Society, including the 'Fantasy EP'. The support that followed came from names that decide careers in this corner of house: Danny Howard on BBC Radio 1, plus Stussy himself, Max Dean, Riordan and Chloé Caillet.

Four labels, eight months

2026 has been a release year with very little air in it. On 9 January, Factory 93 Records — the underground arm of the Insomniac operation — issued the two-track 'Hold On Tight'. The title cut layers talkbox vocals over a bass-led minimal house groove with strings and guitar underneath it, aimed squarely at the back end of a night; 'Mystery of Telekinetic' goes deeper and more hypnotic, an afterhours record rather than a peak-time one. It was his first appearance on an American label of that size.

On 5 June came 'Dawn Of Day', a four-tracker and his first outing on LOCUS, the label run by Enzo Siragusa of fabric and FUSE lineage. 'Waves' opens on percussion and textured synthesis, the title track sets thin, airy chords against a heavy bassline, and the B-side — 'Fragments' and 'I'm Here To Stay' — tightens the drums and brings vocals forward. Landing on LOCUS placed him inside a specific London-Ibiza minimal tradition rather than the broader Dutch tech-house field.

Most recently, on 21 August, he returned to Heavy House Society with the 'Apollo EP', four tracks running from the open-air lift of 'Apollo', built on intricate percussion and drifting vocal fragments, through the thicker drums and chopped vocals of 'Freshness' and the spoken-word groove of 'Electric City', to 'The Last Trace Of Night', which is the most straightforwardly club-facing thing on the record. Sidney Charles premiered the title track ahead of release.

Where he stands in September 2026

The summer settled the question of whether the records were translating into bookings. Van Wee spent it on the Ibiza roster for CUE at Eden in San Antonio, a Sunday residency that ran from 28 June to 2 August, 23:45 until 06:00, pitched deliberately at the British underground end — tech house and garage, no production spectacle, the booth and the record and not much else. The line-up around him included Chopper, Dennis Quin, Lucas Alexander, Ryan Resso, Jamie Aramayo, Ellia Jaya, Bushbaby and Gigsta, with Rarebit Records, Drift and Lotusland taking guest nights.

London followed on 15 August, on a XOYO bill alongside Kepler b2b Job de Jong and Kim April, then the DanceOnArrival Summer Closing Festival in Greenwich across 12 and 13 September. Skiddle currently lists seven upcoming dates and around 1,750 followers tracking him. Amsterdam Dance Event brings him home in October for Paradise x Loveland at Mediahaven, a 23:00 to 07:00 room where he is scheduled back to back with Rooléh — the format he seems most comfortable in, two DJs trading across a long window rather than a headline hour.

The British autumn

The autumn diary is almost entirely British, which is telling for a Dutch artist at this stage. It opens at SWG3 Warehouse in Glasgow on Saturday 19 September, where the new promoter 2Passo has chosen him for its debut event and billed him all night long, doors at 23:00 — a solo set across the whole night, which is a substantial amount of trust to hand a producer this early.

From there: Depot Mayfield in Manchester on 2 and 3 October, the second of those as part of YOU&ME's showcase for The Warehouse Project, Josh Baker's night, on a bill that also carries Prospa, Enzo Siragusa, Chloé Caillet, Dennis Cruz, Seth Troxler, Sidney Charles, Luuk Van Dijk and Julian Fijma. Then The Loft MCR in Manchester on 15 October, Stealth in Nottingham on 30 October, Y Plas at Cardiff University Students' Union on 31 October, and Motion Club in Aberdeen on 11 December. Two of those dates are on sale at the time of writing.