A month ago I wrote here that on 6 August 2026 I would be playing the Tram Stage at UNTOLD, exactly four years after my first set there. It has happened, I am back in Amsterdam, and the recording is online. Here is how it went.
The set
Short version: exactly what I had hoped for. I had set myself a task for this booking - say everything I had to say in sixty minutes without sounding rushed - and it worked. I am happy with it, and that is not my standard reaction after a set. The compliments afterwards were a nice confirmation.
The timing was funny too. I was on right before Sting: him on the main stage in Cluj Arena that evening, me in the tram. That does make you pause and look around for a second.
The full set is now on Mixcloud - almost fifty-five minutes, uncut:
The broadcast
This was my fifth edition as television producer of the UNTOLD broadcast for Dance TV, with Viewcast technology underneath it. And there is very little exciting to report this year, which is precisely the best news you can get about a live broadcast: it ran like clockwork.
That is the side of this job nobody photographs. When it goes well, the viewer at home notices nothing. When it goes wrong, everybody notices at once. I prefer the first version, even if it makes for no stories.
The crowd
The thing that impresses me again every year: the crowd in Cluj. Without exception, people there make an effort - in party mood and in what they wear - and you can see it. The whole site looks as though everyone set a day aside for it, because they did. As a DJ you get something back that you cannot force: people who are ready before you have played your first track.
I did plenty of watching myself. Carl Cox and James Hype were my favourites on the dance side this year. Zara Larsson and Sting were superb, and so was Lewis Capaldi. That is the advantage of a festival running eight stages side by side: in one evening you can see three completely different things and rate all three.
Cluj-Napoca itself
As far as I am concerned the city is underrated. Cluj-Napoca is simply a very good place to spend a week, festival site or no festival site. Terraces, old facades, a centre that works, and during UNTOLD an atmosphere where the whole city joins in.
And as always it started on day zero: dinner and drinks with the production people, before anything goes live. That is a tradition by now and it is also genuinely useful - the week after runs better if you have had that evening. Seeing the same faces on the same site five years running is one of the better parts of this job.
See you next year
UNTOLD 2026 was called UNTOLD ONE and was the eleventh edition: 6 to 9 August, Cluj-Napoca, more than two hundred acts across eight stages. For me the second time as a DJ and the fifth as producer of the broadcast.
In July I wrote that four years ago it was "dreams come true" and that now it is simply work. That still holds. But it is the kind of work where, on the way back to the airport, you are already looking forward to the next edition.
