| DJ Sets ::Cocoon Global Club Nights
N0.26 RATED CLUB IN THE WORLD BY
DJ MAG
Cocoon
Label Details...
The label was founded in 2000 as a part
of the Cocoon Music Event GmbH.
The company's other branches are Cocoon Booking (for Sven
Väth, Ricardo Villalobos, Josh Wink etc. and Cocoon Clubbing,
which organises club events as well as outdoor events and
tours. Since July 2004, Cocoon also runs its own Club, located
in Frankfurt, and being one of the most innovative club locations
worldwide.
Sven founded Cocoon Recordings in order to complete the Cocoon
platform as a supporting tool for young artists in Electronic
Music. The label philosophy is as simple as demanding: helping
young producers and DJs to release their music without depending
on Major Label structures. The musical style of the releases
is mainly Techno.
The best designed club on the planet? Cocoon is Sven Vath's
very own hometown creation. There's a dancefloor, bars and
a restaurant with a really good chef. And what would a Cocoon
be without pods?
DJ Mag Club Review...
From the early EBM and house sounds played at Dorian Gray
during the 1980s, through becoming the birthplace of trance
at The Omen in the 1990s to the electro-house and minimal
styles being pioneered at clubs like Monza and Robert Johnson
today, Frankfurt has long been as important to dance music
as it has to Germany's economy: a city where fresh ideas are
catalysed and then minted into shiny new dancefloor currencies.
However, it's arguably Cocoon that has been the most consistent
and most important since it opened in 2004. The baby of Sven
Väth, who himself cut his teeth DJing at Dorian Gray
and The Omen, Cocoon has taken the legacy of those clubs and
updated it with a style that's not so much 21st as 25th century.
Few clubs have such an instant 'wow!' factor. Strikingly
futuristic, there's almost too much to take in, with psychedelic
visuals spiralling over the vast membrane and projection screens
and the crowd on the dancefloor, whilst the restaurant and
side rooms like Micro are full of shimmering lights and drapes,
not to mention the famous Cocoon pod seating, straight outta
the Starship Enterprise.
But the real sensory overload occurs with the music as well,
and if you're searching for the reason why techno was reborn
to take over clubs across the world in the middle of this
decade then you'll find it directly beneath the raised dais
of a DJ booth surrounded by 1500 other clubbers in Cocoon's
main room.
One of the most colourful party animals in clubland, the
music at Sven's 'Organic Electronics' residency on Fridays
seems to represent the man's personality writ large; as dedicated
to innovative new sounds as it is to unbridled hedonism in
equal measure for the benefit of both the techno trainspotters
and the pure pleasure-seekers. It's a style and attitude he's
exported to Ibiza and on his worldwide tours, but it's at
his own club that you're sampling it straight from the source.
Yet whilst Sven might be the ringmaster at this crazy circus
he doesn't always steal the show, with his friends such as
DJ Hell, Richie Hawtin and Ricardo Villalobos all having played
spectacular sets here.
Playing Cocoon has become both a rite-of-passage and weighted
with expectation for any techno DJ, as was the case for Guy
Gerber when he spun his debut set there.
"When I finally got there I was even more impressed
that I thought I would be, especially as I had the chance
to see the club when it was empty and before the action started,"
he says.
"Although it looks really expensive it isn't over the
limit. I've experienced some crazy moments there. It's a really
industrial underground spot and it has the best soundsystem
compared to all the other places I've played."
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