2025 is shaping up to be a massive year for T & Sugah. With their latest release ‘Louder’ kicking things off this year, they are now working towards the first indoor edition of their very own High Tea Festival.
What started in 2011 as a musical collaboration between the two, grew to become the High Tea Music label in 2016, with the first Festival in 2022. With years of experience as producers and numerous sold-out events under their belt, they know the scene inside and out. “Go hard and be home,” that’s High Tea’s motto. At the end of March, they will be taking over the entire Melkweg. This is a venue in Amsterdam with three concert venues, a movie theatre, an exhibition hall, and more.
It promises to be a festival celebrating all aspects of the rave experience, ranging from showings of drum & bass documentaries and board games, to the biggest dancefloor drum & bass (live) acts of the moment and a silent disco. We had a chat with Philippe from T & Sugah, who has just returned from a US tour, to talk more about their plans for the Festival, their busy tour and release schedule, and everything else they’ve planned for us.
Starting the year with a US tour, cool! How was it?
I’ve had other artists tell me to not expect too much, so I went with that mindset, but I was positively surprised. The first show was already packed with fans. Many ravers wanted to take pictures, and there even were people with T & Sugah shirts at every show. Unbelievable! There was a lot more hype, and we had a lot more fans than I expected. It was especially crazy because while I was in America, Robin was in New Zealand, headlining a festival with Alcemist and playing a run of club shows. So clearly 2025 started out amazingly for us.
While touring the world, you’re also preparing for your biggest High Tea Festival so far, on the 28th of March. Six different areas, that sounds quite impressive. Are you looking forward to this?
After 3 months of solo shows, the first time we (T & Sugah) will finally play together again, will be at High Tea in Amsterdam. The fact that we are playing together for the first time at our own event, I think that’s an amazing sign. I am especially looking forward to that event, as we will be creating a new drum & bass experience in the heart of Amsterdam. Showing more than “just” the music, by for instance including a cinema where we will show drum & bass documentaries, a silent disco, and live acts. We’re even taking things a step further by adding an exhibition space filled with art exploring the intimate and complex relationship between identity, desire, and self-expression from a female perspective. While also adding a complete bar area with board games to just sit back and hang out with your friends.
In our cinema, I’m especially looking forward to the premiere we’re hosting of “Resonance Beyond Borders: The Sounds of Ukraine”. This documentary takes you on a journey following several Ukrainian drum & bass DJs as they reflect on all that has happened (and is happening) during the ongoing war. It includes very emotional footage, up to the point of seeing the insides of a bomb shelter. One of the artists involved in the documentary, Thelena, will be playing that night. A must-see!
Why do you think it’s important to show these documentaries at your festival?
Music connects, and we live in a time with incredible gaps between people, between left and right, rich and poor. It’s only about ourselves, about “us and them”. Music has always been a connecting factor between all people. Every day people don’t desire war; they simply want to live their lives and enjoy the beauty of music. Through the Sounds of Ukraine’s documentary, I hope we can illuminate the different sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Despite our differences, the love for music, in this case D&B, is a bond we all share.
This cinema is only one of the six rooms that you will take over during the festival. How did you come up with the idea of using all six halls of the venue?
We’ve been organising parties and have been in the scene for quite a while now. At some point, you know the drill and you crave for a new experience. You want to create something new for your audience. And given that Melkweg had a cinema, we thought, why not show drum & bass documentaries? Then, when you want to chill, instead of going into a smoking area, you walk straight into an actual cinema! And then we started thinking, what else can we do? We wanted a bar area, with board games. And expositions, because when I first started raving (I went to places like OT301 and Ruigoord, for those who know), I always enjoyed walking around the venues and exploring all the (street) art surrounding you. Nothing more fun to me than discovering new corners, new vibes, and new areas.
People are definitely more open to having some down time at a rave nowadays. It doesn’t all have to be loud music and flashing lights.
Absolutely. Well, you can always go outside if you want to get away for a second, but it’s cold, there’s no music, less vibes… You want places where you can relax and have less stimuli, before going out to the music again.
What else do you have planned for the Festival?
We’re also going to do a 360-stage in one of the halls. People love it. Another thing I can already tell you is that we’re going back to back with Vibe Chemistry as the closing set of the festival! We’ve known him for years, and fun fact, he’s known for rocking the original “High T-Shirt” during his shows, so we thought this would close off the night in a strong way. We’re bringing Metrik, Mozey and Turno to Amsterdam as well. I’ve been a fan of Metrik for years, and I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the years. It’s always nice to have him back at our parties. We have a few artists from the label coming. Natty Lou, for example, who has released a lot of music on High Tea. We’ve got Feed the Fire and Comet, two of our fast-rising artists. Who released a lot with us and are also signed at our agency. We also wanted to include more live elements, because at a festival, you want to have a little more of that live feeling. That’s why we chose to invite Keeno and Ruth Royall. We also invited Hato, who is known to play more of a multigenre set. We really want to create a different experience, and because we have multiple halls, we can do it.
So all three of the DJ halls have their own theme?
I would say that the main hall is going to have more of a dancefloor/jump-up D&B style. The second hall will have more diverse DJs on the line-up earlier in the evening, with some live stuff, more multigenre… Room 3 will showcase the High Tea artists, and this room will also have a silent disco! All the way upstairs at Melkweg, in a small room. Really cosy.
You’ve been organising parties with High Tea for nine years now. Have you noticed a change in the scene?
The scene is always changing. When we started High Tea, we were putting a lot of dubstep on the line-up, but we don’t do that anymore. Deep and liquid used to be a lot bigger as well, but now jump-up is all the hype. Things are always changing, you never know what’s coming next. Every five years you have a whole new generation of ravers who want different things. Right now, everything has to be harder, everything has to be faster. But the next generation might be the opposite because the next generation of ravers will look at the previous one as “old people”.
It’s the same with grandparents, parents, and children, really. You never like what your parents like. Ravers will also not like what the older ravers like, but that’s the interesting thing about the genre. New generations bring in new ideas, and new thoughts about the world, new philosophies and that is reflected in the music being released. The current “new” generation lives life at a faster pace than previous generations. Therefore you see the music becoming more intense as well. The older generation wasn’t really into swiping on TikTok, but the new generation was born with it. I’m very curious what the next generation will be like. God knows. Everything is possible, and that’s the beauty of it. There always have to be new ideas, otherwise the genre comes to a standstill, and that’s the worst that could happen. Some heads say, “It always has to be deep music” and “This is real drum & bass,” but if everyone did the same thing, it would be so boring. It has to change. There have to be new ideas. And you’re going to hate some of the new ideas. But that’s okay.
And how do you adapt to those changes?
I think you unconsciously always adapt because you’re being influenced by your surroundings. Every time I listen to new drum & bass and new subgenres, I always find something in there that interests me. The moment that happens, when there’s that spark, I feel inspired and I go with it. “When you do what you did, you will get what you got,” I think that’s a nice saying. You have to do other things, otherwise you get the same old end product.
That’s a good way of looking at it! Where else do you find inspiration?
New people come with new sounds and new ideas, and sometimes, I find inspiration in my own music. I get inspired by the people I’m booking, by the sound I’m hearing at High Tea events, by the sound of our releases at the label. There are a lot of other artists who inspire me, and sometimes I find inspiration outside of the drum & bass genre, in a hip-hop song for example. Other times I find inspiration in a mistake which suddenly starts sounding cool. Musical inspiration can be found in everything.
Absolutely! Your new single ‘Louder’ came out recently. Can you tell me more about this track, and about what other releases you have planned?
Yes! ‘Louder’ is what we call in the industry a “self-release”, meaning we released it on our own record label without the support of other labels. Interestingly while doing that, the track has still been supported by some of the biggest release bass playlists, such as Liquicity and UKF. We also had some really big influencers on board like Majed and Hato, BBC Radio 1 was supporting as well as 3FM in the Netherlands. Looking back at it now we’ve actually reached all of the goals we wanted to reach with this release, which is quite bizarre. All of the playlists on our wishlist, all the radio plays we wanted, all the influencers. And best of all: we got to work on this release with our own team, our own label manager, our own marketers (who once started as our interns). It’s a great feeling to work in a team with the people you love.
And then for the rest of 2025, every month we’re planning to do something big! We’re releasing a Liquicity single next month, the month after that we’re probably going to put out a collab with Don Diablo. A month after that we have S.P.Y., who has done a remix for us coming out on UKF. The month after that we might do our biggest DnB Allstars single so far. And then in between all of this there’s a remix for Friction that’s coming out and we also got asked for a remix of Rudimental and Hybrid Minds, while we’re working on a collabs with LUUDE and ROVA… It’s absolutely crazy! I love seeing how with ‘Lose Control’ and ‘Lo Lo’ and ‘Danger’, a true new era for T & Sugah has begun.
A lot happening! What’s the next milestone you want to reach?
That’s one of the questions keeping me awake at night. The problem with goals is, when you achieve your goal, what’s next? I’ll give you an example. Our original goal was to play in the Storing, a bar that is now closed in our hometown Haarlem. There are maybe 100 people that fit in there. Our ultimate goal was to play there, so then when you do that you find yourself thinking: now what? Then you want to play in the Melkweg. Afterwards, you think, what now? “I want to play on Rampage,” but then you get to tick that off. Your goal is always moving up. Until recently, the goal was a world tour. But then I started thinking, we played Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Europe, all of them in 2024. That’s starting to look like a world tour, right? I would like to do more of a connected tour, though, because now the ‘ world tour’ consists of separate mini-tours, so to speak. But there will be a time when we have achieved that too. And then what will you do? Do it a second time? Or are we going to Mars? At some point you’re on a level where you can only repeat the process, so another single or another headline show, but go bigger and better each time.
You’ve been making music with T & Sugah for around 10 years now. Did you think you would reach your goals this fast?
On the one hand, you can’t imagine ever reaching your goals when you set them, but on the other hand, you want it to happen now. And when it happens, you expect it to be this big moment, and you can lean back and say, “Look at what we just reached.” But in reality, you already have some new goals set for yourself. Therefore I have to tell myself, “Enjoy that journey!” The planning and seeing everything unfold, noticing the pieces fall into place… That is the best thing about it all. So I force myself once in a while to enjoy all of the goals that we reach, small and big. Like our US tour, for example. What I often do when on tour is open Google Maps, look at my location, zoom out, and then let that sink in. That’s where you are now. That’s how you force that feeling of, “Dude, I did this.” In the madness of travelling around, jetlagging, socializing, etc, it can be hard to find a moment to really cherish it all. Sometimes you just have to take that moment, and that can be a really nice feeling.
What’s next for you?
I’m just accelerating. There are a lot of shows coming in. Our calendar is twice as full, our release schedule packed to the max, and this summer we’re going to play at a ton of drum & bass festivals. Rampage, Liquicity, Let It Roll, D&B Allstars, Hospitality on the Beach, Tomorrowland, etc… If you had told me a few years ago, I would not have believed you. So to say I’m really excited about everything is an understatement!
