- If you ever feel your enthusiasm for Amnesia waning, go with a first-timer. Watching your friends' faces contort with wonder as they step through the doors never loses its thrill; sometimes, you'll even hear them mutter "what the fuck" under their breath. It's the quintessential Ibiza club—a place of overwhelming noise and scale that surpasses most people's wildest expectations, which is remarkable given how famous it is.
Last Monday I visited with two first-timers for Cocoon, the party that, for me, represents Amnesia at its best. Whenever you hear people waxing lyrical about the club, they're usually talking about the Terrace, which is easily the best-loved and most famous of the two spaces. With time, though, your appreciation for the Main Room grows—it's more compact, less busy and, arguably, fitted with a better soundsystem. At Cocoon, it's a space for acts whose style is unsuited to the booming, wide-open Terrace, whether they play dark, fast techno or deep house. Dana Ruh warmed up in there on Monday, pushing muscular grooves with big hooks. With 15 minutes to go, she went harder, playing a track with a fast-paced guitar riff that took the roof off when it dropped.
Part of Cocoon's thing has always been helping to build the profiles of Ibiza's next stars—Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos and Luciano might not be where they are today if it wasn't for that initial leg-up. One of the current candidates is Sonja Moonear, a DJ who cut her teeth at Fuse before moving to Cocoon, where she's established herself with key warm-up slots and, just recently, a mix CD. She followed Ruh with the most banging set I've heard her play, stringing together big-room tunes with percussive cores that seemed to be in constant dialogue with one another. The first moment came three tracks in with Redshape's "Tel Aviv," replicated later on with Green Velvet's "Answering Machine" and a run of techno tracks with cacophonous atmospheres and rowdy breakbeats.
Nina Kraviz ended up in a similarly off-kilter zone, though rather than take Moonear's lead, she made her own way there. Things started off mellow; Kraviz leant, as she often does, on her own "Desire" to bridge the gap between gears three and five, before cementing the spike in energy with a tough remix of Inner City's "Good Life." From there until 6:30 AM, it was all throbbing techno, slamming breaks and the occasional, soaring trance melody. For my friends, it was a classy ending to a night that, for reasons other than the music, will live long in the memory. For me, it was "a reminder of just how good Amnesia can be"—I use quotation marks because I wrote that exact sentence, twice, as a note on my phone.
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Phrank.net