High Tolerance · The playlist
High Tolerance: The Playlist
Twenty tracks, 1986 to 1995, for the High Tolerance walk: the sound of Amsterdam after dark, in the years the city learned to look away.
The walk’s argument is simple. Amsterdam never permitted much out of conviction; it tolerated what was useful. Dance music arrived the same way. It came from the Black and gay clubs of Chicago and Detroit, slipped in through Britain’s acid summer, and found a home in places that were not quite legal and not quite forbidden: squats, an old cinema on the Singel, a club on the Amstelstraat. Within a few years the Dutch were making the records themselves.
The playlist follows that arc in five chapters of four tracks: the import, the acid summer, the Dutch answer, and the two clubs that defined the era, RoXY and iT. Play it in order on the walk, or on its own, late.
Playlist · 20 tracks
High Tolerance
The player is Spotify’s. Loading it lets Spotify set its own cookies.
Chapter 1
The Import
House and techno were born in Chicago and Detroit, in clubs the rest of America preferred not to see. These four records crossed the ocean first.
- 01
Can You Feel It
Mr. Fingers · 1986
Larry Heard’s Chicago track is the blueprint for deep house: warm, unhurried, almost spiritual. A later version laid Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech over the same groove, turning a club record into a statement about freedom. We open with it because it sets the tone of the whole era: the dance floor as a place where everyone was let in.
- 02
Strings of Life
Rhythim Is Rhythim · 1987
Derrick May’s Detroit anthem has a piano and string arrangement that feels closer to classical music than to a club. Every DJ in Amsterdam played it. It is the bridge between house and the harder techno sound that would later take over the Netherlands.
- 03
Promised Land
Joe Smooth · 1987
A gospel song dressed as a house record, about a better place just ahead. It captured the utopian mood of the first clubs, where for one night the outside world did not apply. The Style Council covered it in 1989, a sign of how fast the sound was spreading.
- 04
Acid Tracks
Phuture · 1987
Three Chicago friends, one Roland TB-303 bass machine, and a squelching, twisting sound nobody had heard before. This is where acid house begins. Without it there is no acid summer, and no wave of new clubs across Europe.
Chapter 2
Acid Summer
In 1988 the sound exploded in Britain and spilled across the North Sea, bringing a new drug culture with it. The Low Countries didn’t just listen; they started answering.
- 05
Voodoo Ray
A Guy Called Gerald · 1988
Gerald Simpson made this in Manchester, and it became one of the defining records of Britain’s acid summer. It shows the route the music took: from America, through English warehouses and fields, to the clubs of the continent.
- 06
Jack to the Sound of the Underground
Hithouse · 1988
The first real Dutch success. DJ Peter Slaghuis took it into the British top twenty. This is the moment the Netherlands stopped only importing the sound and started exporting it.
- 07
French Kiss
Lil Louis · 1989
The tempo slows almost to a stop, then builds again, with moaning woven through the track. Radio stations were wary of it, and clubs played it anyway. Few records fit the walk’s line better: not permitted, but tolerated.
- 08
Pump Up the Jam
Technotronic · 1989
Belgian producer Jo Bogaert’s project put Benelux house on the world’s charts. It proved that this small corner of Europe could make club music for everyone, not just for the underground.
Chapter 3
Made in Holland
By the early nineties the Dutch were producing their own sound, in two cities that never agreed on anything: Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
- 09
Pullover
Speedy J · 1991
Rotterdam producer Jochem Paap made techno with its own melodic signature. It earned the Netherlands respect in the international techno world, far from the commercial charts.
- 10
James Brown Is Dead
L.A. Style · 1991
Despite the name, a Dutch production, and a provocative one. It became a hit across Europe and sits right on the line between underground and pop.
- 11
Amsterdam Waar Lech Dat Dan?
Euromasters · 1992
Rotterdam’s answer to Amsterdam. Made by Paul Elstak and Rob Fabrie, it mocks the capital’s polished house crowd with a chant asking where Amsterdam even is. Even the counter-movement defined itself against Amsterdam, which says a lot about the city’s place in the scene.
- 12
Plastic Dreams
Jaydee · 1992
Dutch producer Robin Albers built this around a long, jazzy organ line that refuses to end. It is still played in clubs today, more than thirty years later. If the list needs one track that sounds timeless, this is it.
Chapter 4
RoXY
RoXY, in a former cinema on the Singel, was Amsterdam’s artistic heart of the night: a strict door, a mixed crowd, and DJs who played what they believed in rather than what was safe.
- 13
Deep Inside
Hardrive · 1993
Produced by New York house legend Louie Vega, built on a raw, pumping bassline and a vocal that repeats the title until it gets under your skin. It became a favourite in the sets of RoXY resident DJ Dimitri.
- 14
Vallée de Larmes
René et Gaston · 1993
One of many aliases of the Haarlem duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist. Deep, hypnotic and slightly melancholic, it suited the mysterious atmosphere RoXY cultivated. The same two men also made a big iT hit (track 19): one duo, two very different clubs.
- 15
Throw
Paperclip People · 1994
Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig under one of his aliases. Minimal, funky and endlessly grooving, it shows that RoXY was not afraid to play underground techno at the peak of the night.
- 16
Born Slippy (Nuxx)
Underworld · 1995
Released in 1995 and played at RoXY by Joost van Bellen before the film Trainspotting made it a worldwide hit a year later. Its raw energy and slow build matched the club’s artistic, rebellious character.
Chapter 5
iT
iT on the Amstelstraat was the theatrical, gay-led counterpart to RoXY: louder, more glamorous, and famous across Europe. House music had started in gay clubs in Chicago; in Amsterdam it found the same kind of home.
- 17
Passion
Gat Decor · 1992
A British track with a melodic, floating build, the gentle side of early-nineties house. It was the kind of record that held a crowd through the long middle of the night.
- 18
Show Me Love
Robin S · 1990, remix 1992
The original was a modest release; Swedish producer StoneBridge’s remix, with its unmistakable organ bass, made it one of the biggest vocal house records ever. When that bassline started, the whole floor sang along.
- 19
Give It Up
The Good Men · 1993
Made by DJ Zki and Dobre from Haarlem, later known as Chocolate Puma, with a small mixer on broken speakers in a bedroom. Its samba percussion fit the carnival atmosphere of iT perfectly, and the track went on to top the US dance chart and reach number five in Britain.
- 20
Feel What You Want
Kristine W · 1994
An American club anthem with a huge voice, adopted by the gay scene as a song about freedom and letting go. We end here, with the light coming up and the city still tolerating what it never officially allowed.
The music is the background. The walk is where the city tells the story.
Take the walk →