20 years of Cocoon

Of course, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. At times the club has been a victim of its own success. An afterpary on Talamanca beach attracted 4,500 people back in 2004: “they were parking their cars two miles away and walking in,” says Johannes. “The police turned up by boat as they couldn’t get close by car, and they didn’t tell us to stop, they told us to keep going. They said, ‘If you stop this party now the road will collapse!” At other times the volatile political atmosphere that surrounds the Ibizan authorities’ love/hate relationship with the clubs has made life difficult: in 2006 they were told that the closing party had to finish at 6am, although the club could re-open at 8am using the next day’s licence: Johannes and Sven solved it

by telling 5,000 people go to the car park, broadcasting Sven DJing on their car radios and giving out free food and drink for two hours. At 8am they piled in again for Luciano, Richie and Ricardo. In 2007, 72 hours before the opening party, the whole production had to be moved across the road to Privilege after Amnesia was closed down for a month. And while Sven and co are proud of their influence on the island, it clearly saddens him that some of the DJs they gave a first Ibiza residency to and even introduced to the island have split, sometimes acrimoniously, to start competing nights. “I saw all my babies were growing out of their children’s shoes and wanted to go their own way,” he says. “I’m not friends with all of them any more because some were very rude. They didn’t say goodbye properly, or in a good way.”

While Ibiza was taking off Sven was powering ahead with more plans, more dreams. In 2004 he opened a purpose-built 1,500-capacity club in Frankfurt with a Michelin-starred restaurant attached that remains perhaps the finest temple ever built to techno in history. “It was so futuristic, the main room was like a spaceship,” says tINI, the German DJ who has become an Ibiza icon with her tINI & The Gang parties, and mixed last year’s Cocoon Ibiza compilation with Dana Ruh. “It was a masterpiece,” says Talida. Unfortunately the club only lasted until 2012, eventually trying to make up money by compromising with hip hop and commercial nights before finally going into administration. “The same thing happened as with the very first event. People couldn’t believe it when they got there, that it was built for them. ‘Can I sit here? Can I touch this?’ Maybe it was too good.” A statement announcing its closure made it clear that Sven hadn’t been involved in its day-to-day running.

Fortunately, other areas of Cocoon were thriving. In 2000 Sven launched Cocoon Recordings with ‘Cocoon Compilation A’ and ‘The Sound Of The First Season’ mixed by Sven himself. Since then the label has flourished as a place not only for regular, stunning compilations, but also as a platform (that word again) for discovering new talent. “It’s my label,” says Sven, “so I said, ‘No compromises. I’ll just do what I want to do’. It’s very exciting and satisfying, signing up new artists like Ricardo Tobar. His album [‘Collection’] was one of the best of last year.”

The label ranges far and wide across electronic music, and DJs have varying views on what unites them. Adam Beyer has a theory: “The best word is ‘organic’. By that I mean a journey – every track with a start and an end, melodies and emotions, more like live jams compared to other labels. I think that’s down to the way that Sven DJs – he likes to play full songs. Let the music speak, that’s his style.” Richie Hawtin agrees: “Sven has always supported music that tells a story; songs that have a narrative and take people on a deep, euphoric, melody-induced trip. This characteristic runs strong in all Sven’s sets, and the releases on Cocoon.” Ilario enjoys the freedom that the label allows. “When I do tracks I send to Edgar the label manager and he listens together with Sven, then they decide whether to release them. [They don’t tell me to change things]… I’m free to do whatever I want, normally even choose the remixers as well, which is really important to me.”

So here we are in 2016, Cocoon’s empire stretching across the globe. “The event department tells me this is their strongest year yet, looking at the number of events and also the variety of territories,” says Maurizio Schmitz, who took over from Talida as Sven’s exclusive agent in winter 2009/spring 2010. “This year we had the eighth edition of Cocoon in the Park in Leeds, residencies like Watergate in Berlin and Tomorrowland; we did Cocoon in Australia recently. We have a residency in Tokyo at Womb and festival stages all over the world, from Europe to Dubai, Australia and South America. At Sónar we do a Cocoon event and we have two other shows in Spain; in Italy we are really strong. In England we have Studio 338, we did Fabric and Electric Brixton. We are on every continent except Africa.” More happy people, more parties, a bigger platform for artists and DJs who share the Cocoon philosophy. But what is that philosophy? What’s the golden thread that has kept Cocoon surviving and thriving for two decades now?

“It’s about music,” says Luciano. “it’s about Sven, it’s about sharing, it’s about love, it’s about the experience, it’s about a musical genre and a musical philosophy.”

“A cocoon is a protective covering that envelopes and protects a creature while it grows and develops,” offers Josh Wink. “And perhaps Cocoon and Sven’s philosophy is that his brand envelopes and provides for a like-minded colony of creatures that are symbiotic and share a special musical bond and experience.”

“I’d say Cocoon is a lifestyle, says Maurizio. “Cocoon is a certain platform, a certain possibility. Everybody has the chance to express themselves: it could be an artist from the agency, it could be someone who’s working for Cocoon, but most of all it’s the people who join the party. We want people to express themselves, to be free, to live this experience.”

“Sven’s philosophy for Cocoon,” says Johannes, “is to create a platform for everyone to create our own metamorphoses. Without the possibilities that Sven gave me, I would still be a butcher somewhere in Germany. It’s the same for so many young artists. He gave us the platform to be creative, to start our own metamorphoses.”

The main man should, of course, have the last word. “We know what we do comes straight out of our heart, full-on, with our passion,” he explains. “The music is always the driving force in what we do because we all love to rave, we all love to dance, we all love to go wild – but we also want to deliver. We want to show people what we can do, to show them all this at its best.” And with that he finishes his champagne and bounds off to play his DJ set, ‘super-excited’, as always, to do just that.

Duncan Dick is Mixmag's Editor. Follow him on Twitter here

Carl Craig and Sonja Moonear’s two-disc Cocoon Ibiza mix is out now