It’s a sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, with brilliant blue skies and nothing but a few sparse clouds in sight. Pelotons of cyclists ride calmly and somewhat silently through the streets, over the quaint canals and leafy avenues, the quiet interrupted with the occasional tram passing by. It’s nearing the end of the summer, and today it’s a welcome 24 degrees.

We arrive in Amsterdam’s Oud-West, a delightful and peaceful neighbourhood that Niels Steenbergen, AKA Chris Stussy, calls home. He greets us with a smile at the door of his new house of two months, and we settle at the table with an iced tea. It’s a beautiful space; his vinyl collection is organised neatly by the turntables set up in the living room, which overlooks a picturesque balcony. Natural light gleams through the windows, and downstairs he’s created a home studio. For Stussy, it’s the perfect sanctuary.

The 29-year-old Dutch DJ and producer is one of the most prominent names representing the new wave of groove-led house music that’s been emanating from the Netherlands in recent years. Stussy’s sound is one that he’s been crafting over the past decade, with a consistent flow of productions that have gained him a dedicated and fast-growing fanbase, with early releases on widely respected labels such as legendary New York imprint Nervous Records. In recent years, he’s further refined his take on house music with records for distinguished Parisian label Yoyaku and Kerri Chandler’s Kaoz Theory, as well as through curating his very own imprint, Up The Stuss.

Earlier this year, his single ‘All Night Long’ became an overnight sensation; starting out as a certified club hit, after hundreds of frenzied ID requests it quickly became a summer festival anthem too. From its first play on a live stream in March, which clocked up over 640,000 plays, to over 5 million streams on Spotify to date, somehow this feels like it’s just the beginning. “This is at Creamfields, 20,000 people. This is why they call it the runway... it’s like above the crowd, super trippy for people,” Chris explains, showing us a clip on Instagram of where he’ll be playing soon.

Spinning in front of large crowds like this has become second nature to Stussy; he feels just as comfortable on a festival stage in front of thousands as he does in the booth of an intimate 600-capacity club, and often will seamlessly transition between the two in one weekend. We’ve caught him at an opportune moment in between his travels; yesterday he returned from Sonus Festival in Croatia, and tomorrow he heads to play DC-10 in Ibiza for a B2B with PAWSA, before flying to the UK to play at Eastern Electrics, LAB11 and Creamfields. It’s been a whirlwind summer for Stussy but he’s far from tired; in fact, he’s full of enthusiasm and more inspired than ever.

Stussy grew up in Leiden, a municipality in South Holland near the coast that’s 30 minutes drive from Amsterdam and Rotterdam. A picturesque destination with 16th-17th century architecture and near sandy beaches, it’s also known for its nightlife as a student city. However, his first introduction to dance music was long before he’d entered a nightclub, via his parents’ eclectic music collection and a series of mix CDs. “At home, mum and dad were listening to jazz and trance, stuff like that. There was this DJ called Ben Liebrand making CDs with super-cool house, ’90s stuff which I always used to listen to. We’d load it up into the computer, you know, these old school speakers next to the screen. That’s how I was listening to music when I was 13 or 14.”