After post-rock icons Godspeed You! Black Emperor performed at this year's Rewire Festival in The Hague, Rainy Miller told me he was only one of the many grown folks openly weeping during the show. This tapped into something I'd observed throughout the event: the most anticipated performances consistently found loving audiences.

When it comes to music, Amsterdam and Rotterdam tend to hog the spotlight in the Netherlands. The Hague, by contrast, is known as the nation's earnest seat of politics and international justice. But the city's central district holds more charm than you might expect, with spotless streets, lanes and canals that are home to an endless supply of trendy eateries and stores—as well as the striking cultural venues adopted by Rewire Festival each year. Taking place across a sweep of theatres, music venues, record shops and places of worship, Rewire easily holds its weight in the world of experimental electronic festivals.

Take Amnesia Scanner's high-tech, high-impact snaptrance.webcam show with New York-based digital artist Freeka Tet. It was rapturously received, the crowd pressing eagerly against the stage despite the duo arriving at the tall, narrow PAARD 45 minutes late. Tim Hecker premiered a collaboration with multidisciplinary designer Vincent de Belleval in a pitch-black theatre. The performance, cinematic and experiential, used a single LCD light as the only visual focus. It flickered and dissolved from solid reds through crimsons and violets before ending in vibrant blues.

But the hottest ticket of the weekend was the debut live performance of Correspondences by Soundwalk Collective and their longtime collaborator Patti Smith. Although several moments of their film/poetry/music project felt overdone—did a performance with cracking ice sound FX, poetic lyrics about winter and night vision footage of arctic wolves stalking in snow also require a giant block of ice on stage?—the sheer gravitas of Smith's presence was hungrily welcomed nonetheless.

What sets Rewire apart is the bold curation on show. After their Saturday night set, Ugandan DJ, producer and artist Authentically Plastic expressed a gratitude for being part of an event they called "insanely curated." This was most clearly reflected in the number of marquee acts debuting fresh material over the four days—more than 20 world premiere performances, debut commissions and collaborations were unique to Rewire. Put simply, Rewire was an embarrassment of riches.

Here are five key performances from the weekend.

Coby Sey

"The energy was too up and down for me," someone said on the way out of Coby Sey's performance. They hit the nail on the head. One of the joys of his music is its freewheeling nature, but in this setting, complete with a four-person ensemble that included saxophone and clarinet, the lulls occasionally sounded more like a ramshackle jam band trying to find the pocket.

That said, there were moments of brilliance. One ambient instrumental passage featured Sey on bass and FX and the band's drummer on vibraphone, both bathed in a soft yellow light. It swelled into Sey, eventually alone, building layer upon abrasive layer of industrial abstraction, before the entire band filtered back in, one by one, for a punchy, percussive arrangement. Ultimately, what serves Sey best is clear musical direction or moments of quiet reflection. The latter ended the show: alone on a low-lit stage, with just his crushed-velvet singing voice, bass and plush layers of reverb, he picked his way through his 2021 cover of Seal's "Kiss From A Rose."

Fever Ray

I'll admit it: I've never quite understood the appeal of Fever Ray. Karin Dreijer's frostbitten ghoul persona and chilly productions have always left me a little, well, cold. Yet under the set dressing of a wonky street lamp on a cement plinth, their Radical Romantics-era performance took on the feel of a fringe underground pantomime. Dreijer sauntered out in an oversized white suit and tie, hair slicked down into a comb over—half Thin White Duke and half oily used-car salesman—feet planted in one spot but perpetually swaying or slowly grinding their hips. The keyboard player and drummer wore a twinkly cloud hat and metallic sunburst crown respectively, and the back-up singers arrived dressed like business associates, stripping off pieces of clothing between songs to reveal more risqué garb. The twee tropical flourishes of Radical Romantics tracks like "New Utensils" and "Kandy" added to the waking-dream-living-nightmare quality, adding campy, creepy warmth as Dreijer blasted through older hits like "When I Grow Up" and "Mustn't Hurry," lasciviously handing long-stemmed roses to the audience.

Dreamcrusher

After more than a decade as a prolific noise artist, Dreamcrusher seemed unfazed by the wall of people surrounding them in the packed, low-ceilinged basement as they soundchecked. After testing samples of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) dialogue, fuzzy guitars and thundering trap beats, checking mic levels, coaching a seemingly clueless technician through the requirements of their lighting rider ("These lights here, turn them off! These lights on the side should be flashing!"), bantering with the audience ("Go buy all my shit! It's Bandcamp Friday!"), finding a lighter for the incense they positioned around the stage and anointing themselves in palo santo smoke, the molten ferocity of the performance itself almost came as a shock.

Titanic mutations of various sludgy tempos throbbed out of the speaker stacks, as Dreamcrusher howled into a microphone that illuminated their mouth with a tiny pin light. As each track increased in intensity, condensation dripped more steadily from the ceiling. They gripped hands with audience members, often disappearing into the mosh pit completely. A person at the front, wearing a grey hoodie emblazoned with the word "GIRLFRIEND," embodied the deep catharsis of the performance. Dropping to their knees beside Dreamcrusher during the last track, they threw their head back and screamed in unison.

Perila & Pavel Milyakov

I was excited by the prospect of Perila's intimate ambient combined with the less overtly dance floor-centred work of Pavel Milyakov, AKA Buttechno. What I hadn't expected was the sense of fully realised pastoral stillness they evoked from each other. Stepping into the venue on a buzzy Sunday afternoon, I felt like I was being gently sealed off from the outside world. Bathed in a red light, the pair created captivating tonal poems, Perila's voice drifting like vapour as Milyakov's guitar work cut through and grounded the work with dubby reverb.

Kelela

Kelela—a striking presence in a platinum blonde buzz cut, slinky black halter dress, patent leather boots and gloves up over her knees and elbows—stalked on stage accompanied by nothing more than the haze from a smoke machine. The room had a feverish energy. In contrast to many of the other high-concept acts at Rewire, the US artist told us her show would just be about her voice, the default stage lights and some backing tracks. "No hoopla," she announced. "This is a dance party."

Kelela is a performer, in the old-school sense. She occupied the entire stage, moving slowly and captivatingly, connecting with specific pockets of fans. Her silken voice added to a deliberate and otherworldly type of elegance. The performance was Raven-heavy, bookended with the records' opening and closing tracks, "Washed Away" and "Far Away," as well as its uptempo jams like "Happy Ending" and "Contact." Before launching into slower cuts like "On the Run" and "Sorbet," she explained some of the inspirations behind the record, such as "the emotional stuntedness of male stoicism" (received to fervent applause). She seemed taken aback by what she referred to several times as the "warm" response from the Rewire audience—testament to a crowd as adventurous and attuned to impeccable pop arrangements as its programmers.