On October 22nd, Sandbox Festival’s touring spin-off Sandbox Selects pulls into Garage Noord for its first-ever Amsterdam show during Amsterdam Dance Event.
Photo Credit: Sandbox Festival – Official
Before the doors open, we caught up with founder Tito El Kachab, the man who turned a handful of parties on Egypt’s Red Sea coast into one of the Middle East’s most popular festivals, to talk about the Amsterdam debut, twelve years of Sandbox, and why we should definitely pay attention to Egypt’s electronic scene.
EG: Tito, welcome to EG. Your first spin-off event took place in Dubai. Tell us all about the concept behind ‘Sandbox Selects’ and how you adapt the “Sandbox feeling” to a one-night club show versus a multi-day festival on the beach?
Tito El Kachab: Thanks for the invite. Sandbox is over 100 artists, 36 hours of music, and three days on the beach. Squeezing that physical and communal scale into one evening would never work, and it wouldn’t do the experience justice.
When you think of Sandbox as an adventurous outlet that people have appreciated for 12 years, the feeling makes more sense. It comes down to intent: stepping into a space with a warm, boundary-pushing atmosphere that invites you to try something different. I might be biased, though.
With Selects, we aren’t trying to literally replicate the festival or compress three days into six hours. We’re taking our DNA into an intimate, liberating club environment. Whether it’s a three-day festival on the coast or a single night in Amsterdam, Dubai, or Cairo, the ethos is the same.
EG: Why did you choose Amsterdam to host your second Sandbox Selects edition, and what can the ADE crowd experience at the event?
Tito El Kachab: Amsterdam felt like a natural choice because it has one of the most musically engaged, open-minded dance music communities in the world. ADE brings together people who genuinely care about selector culture. Garage Noord is raw, intimate, and feels like it’s been built with community-first energy, which is the same spirit we started with at Nacelle.
The showcase shares sounds from ‘The Sandbox Stage,’ which is one of Sandbox’s underground-leaning spaces that’s allowed for artistic experimentation since the beginning. We think it is a balanced representation of our core crowd – combining long-standing Cairo residents Aly Goede, Misty, and Jess alongside global underground selectors Courtesy and Anthea. The crowd can expect an environment where music comes first, and people leave their ego at the door.
EG: How did the idea for Sandbox Festival come up, and how did you get it started?
Tito El Kachab: I was working as a computer chip engineer, and I started DJing in my early twenties back in Montreal. I wasn’t trying to build a festival; I just wanted a place to play music I loved, for people who actually wanted to hear it. When I moved to Egypt, I kept doing that: hosting nights, mostly because there wasn’t really anywhere else to do it. We thought about it like we were doing events just to have a place to play.
Those nights slowly turned into something bigger. More people started playing, more people started showing up, and at some point we realized we had an actual events company on our hands, which became Nacelle. Today we handle everything from concepts and corporate work to concerts and festivals. Sandbox Festival grew out of that same instinct. In the beginning, it was small; it was “let’s do it, we want to play music for everyone.” If you build it, they will come. That’s genuinely how I think about those early years.
The real turning point came in 2015, when we moved to a three-day format on the Red Sea coast and introduced a cashless system. Pulling off a three-day electronic music event in Egypt, and keeping it disciplined and cohesive, is what showed us how far Sandbox could go.
EG: With 12 editions of Sandbox Festival under your belt, what does it take to get a festival right?
Tito El Kachab: Twelve editions later, if there’s one lesson that stands above the rest, it’s this: never let the human element slip away. Genuine connection between people is hard to come by at festivals in this region, and the moment you start booking purely to chase bigger numbers, you’ve basically built a social media algorithm with a stage attached, not a festival. The instant ego creeps in, whether from an artist or a crowd that’s stopped actually listening, that exchange of energy between stage and floor, the thing that makes a night memorable, just evaporates. Guarding against that has become something close to a mission for us.
Second: don’t chase scale for its own sake. We intentionally control our growth year on year. It’s tempting to say yes to everything once people want in, but balance is what keeps a brand’s vision intact in a market that moves fast.
Third: charge properly and deliver real value. It’s better to charge premium rates and give people something genuinely worth it than to undercharge and cut corners. Sponsorships and food and beverage give us margin, but the foundation always has to be the experience itself.
And honestly, the biggest lesson after twelve years: don’t quit. Period. If something looks like a failure one year, that doesn’t mean the idea was wrong; run it again. A good festival also has to feel looked after: a visible team, people properly handling safety and artist hosting, so that even if someone doesn’t love the music, they still go home having had a good time.
“With Selects, we aren’t trying to literally replicate the festival or compress three days into six hours. We’re taking our DNA into an intimate, liberating club environment”
EG: Tell us what’s unique about the electronic dance scene and artists in Egypt?
Tito El Kachab: It’s not a scene where people are just copy-pasting what’s popular elsewhere. Our DJs don’t all show up trying to play the exact same thirty tracks off a top chart. Because it’s harder to build things here – the people making music or behind the decks are doing it out of passion.
There’s also an openness in the local crowd that lets selectors dig deeper. Between 2014 and 2019 especially, a wave of local artists came up on our decks playing everything from minimal to techno, building long, patient sets. Egyptian artists specifically bring a very distinct, niche approach that feels genuine to who they are, without chasing trends or forcing sound into a box.
EG: What do you hope to see more of in the electronic music scene, and what would you like to see less of?
Tito El Kachab: More: People trusting the music again and letting DJs really play. Giving selectors room to build something over time instead of expecting an immediate, peak-time payoff. I also want more promoters who prioritize making people feel taken care of: proper sound, a welcoming team, and clear safety so you feel looked after, not just left in a room with speakers.
Less: Treating the dancefloor like a backdrop. Big bookings and moments are a healthy part of modern nightlife culture, but they’re just the entry point. The real magic happens when people stop watching the DJ through a screen and start contributing to the dance floor. A great DJ can only take a night so far. But a locked-in, open-minded dancefloor is what makes the experience legendary.
The scene needs a bigger push toward building dancefloors where people are fully engaged in the exchange between the music and the crowd.
EG: What’s your own go-to track or artist to listen to when you need to remember why you started doing this?
Tito El Kachab: Honestly, I try to stay low-key about my own musical taste, but if I need to reset, I always go back to late 90s house. Anything by Glenn Underground or Kerri Chandler. Putting on a track like Glenn Underground’s ‘There Is A Time’ or Kerri Chandler’s ‘Atmosphere (Track 1)’ or ‘Rain’ instantly resets me.
That whole era had a specific soul, warmth, and musicality to it that came straight from vinyl culture. You bought a record because of how it transformed a room, not because it’s trending. That’s what reminds me why we do all of this.
‘Sandbox Selects’ will take place at Garage Noord on October 22nd, 2026. Grab your tickets here.
