Cocoon was such a game-changer for me, as I'm sure it was for many people - and the island of Ibiza itself.
I'd known of Sven since the 90's, I had an album by him and listened to some mixes of his, so knew of him long before I stumbled into Cocoon at Amnesia in 2004.
Before this point, I was going to see DJs like Pete Tong, Erick Morillo (yuck), Paul Van Dyk - but I did also like techno, and always had done. Yet stepping into Cocoon was another world - gone were my fellow Brits and the obvious build-it-up highs and lows, in was a cosmopolitan crowd (that I really didn't suit at the time), and music that was really groovy.
From then I was pretty much obsessed with Cocoon - I'd also discovered minimal techno that same night with Steve Bug playing in the terrace, and my musical life was changed.
The music just had this novelty to it, this sexiness - it was techno but it was slower, it wasn't just 99% blokes. There was drama in the music, and Cocoon in Ibiza was just theatre itself - from the DJs, the music, but also the dancers, the decor and the crowd. It was just something else. Oh the dancers!
Life has never been better than now for me, yet I still reminisce of that era, I'm still sat here now nearly 20 years later searching for ways to interact with that little piece of clubbing history. Still watching the very few videos that exist, still pining for those nights.
Cocoon Ibiza 2004
There's a bit of me that is tempted to book a flight for
Cocoon 2025 in a couple of weeks, but also 10pm is bedtime nowadays.