Review: Cocoon at The Warehouse Project, 2/11/12

2012 has undoubtedly been the year of change for The Warehouse Project, centralised around the move from Store Street to Trafford Park Road. Some things have remained the same however, and Sven Vath's mighty Cocoon imprint was of course allocated its annual slot in the monstrous WHP calendar that we continue to drool over.

Papa Sven was set to headline the most powerful Cocoon line-up that WHP has ever seen, with a bunch of Cocoon associates including long standing minimal magician Ricardo Villalobos, Drumcode boss Adam Beyer, DC10 favourite Cassy, ar:pia:r's Raresh and a whole handful more.

The prospect of Sven and his comrades taking over the fantastically huge Warehouse was very exciting. Last weekend, the time came to indulge and enter Into The Magic...

On arrival, Dinky was smashing it in the busy second room; tune after tune after tune. She doesn't hold back and was certainly not afraid to bombard the crowd with non-stop, heavily groove-laden, belters, like Mike Dunn's ode to the acid house times 'Iz Diz Houz?' and Christian Burkhardt's 'Delight'. Dinky got the party started, that's for sure.

Over in the main room, also representing the true ladies of underground techno, Cassy was chugging out some throbbing techno in the warm up to Sven, in true Cocoon style. We danced under thin screens hanging from the high rise ceiling, displaying images of the Cocoon Heroes that help make all the magic happen, as Cassy seamlessly mixed through vinyl on stage at the front.

Back over in the second room, Raresh had taken over the reigns with a flow of up beat yet minimal techno laced with serious amounts of rhythmic percussion; drum rolls please! We got lost in the beats as they rolled up, down and around the pleasant, pumping tech. It was clear when the end of his set was approaching; we were squeezed in towards the front, as more and more people took up position ready for the  master Ricardo Villalobos. He began gracefully with a trippy, minimal beat, that progressed into a work of art that is impossible to describe, purely because it took over our minds and took us somewhere else that was not quite on this planet. After an unrecognisable amount of time we were snapped back to reality as Villalobos merged in the faster paced euphoric, German techno that we associate with the back of end of his (and Sven's) sets.

The decision to choose between Villalobos and Sven had not been easy, as the two had been billed to perform at the same time. However, base on Ricardo's performance, it was definitely a decision that we did not regret.

In the main room, Sven Vath was rounding off his own set with even heavier techno, in preparation for the Drumcode/Cocoon spectacular that was about to follow from Adam Beyer.

Pumping fists at the ready, we braced ourselves as Beyer wasted no time laying down fast, evil techno that was enough to shake the timid tech heads in the building. Some of the crowd appeared to have filed out, as the audience in the colossal main room did look surprisingly sparse. For all the true techno heads that remained however this was no matter, and all around us faces were transformed by that dirty techno, scrunched-up look we give as we take in the power - and the stomping continued. Beyer even threw in a heavy remix of the classic 'Dominator' by Human Resource to the delight of the loyal crowd. The final part of the night was, in a word, intense!

And that was that, another highly enjoyable experience at one of THE best venues in the UK. It may not have been around for long - we're only half way through its first season - but with top quality management and a range of ridiculously good line-ups, Trafford Park Road, the WHP, is THE place to be this Winter.

Words: Jack Law

Photo: Gemma Parker

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