- Claims that Ibiza's best days are behind it are nothing new. Ever since Amnesia added a bar and stopped operating as a working finca in the late '70s, there have been naysayers. Yet with visitors to Ibiza drastically down from last year, even The White Isle's most optimistic supporters had to admit that the 2009 season had its problems. The closure of DC-10 and the failure of some new nights on the Island were both arguments that gave unexpected substance to the "Ibiza is over" debate—and that's without even considering Ibiza's blatantly extortionate drinks and admission prices. Anyone that had written Ibiza off this year, however, must have failed to consider Cocoon's closing party at Amnesia, which managed to provide one of the most spectacularly mindblowing club experiences imaginable.
Despite rumours of a sell out, the only queues when we arrived were for those trying to blag their way in on the guestlist—a tact that was understandable considering tickets priced at around €60. Inside the place, however, things were already beginning to get seriously full. With Zip, Luciano and Ricardo casually warming the terrace with the more spaciously percussive side of their sound, Loco Dice delivered a contrastingly fierce and unrelenting set in the main room. Mixing jacking house and crunching Minus style techno, Dice swiftly ramped up the energy levels in the room by deftly working the EQs and cutting in acapellas from US rapper Redman and random South American warblers. Although the night had just began, the atmosphere was already ferociously intense as Dice caused the crowd to go into fits of cheering and fist pumping quite literally the whole way through some tracks. It was at this point, just as the room began to peak and space beginning to get tight, that you realised that Cocoon closing was going to be a really busy night.
Venturing on to the Terrace proved to be a slightly less confined experience. The Chilean / German trio of Villalobos, Luciano and Zip were continuing to play back-to-back but had now settled into a more up-tempo house groove. As Martinez & Matthias Tanzman's "Ohh I Don't Know" dropped, Amnesia's ice cannons fired, causing pandemonium as dry ice viciously attacked the dancefloor like a demented science fiction fog before evaporating into the increasingly sweat-filled din. Following this Ricardo and Zip began to indulge themselves for the first time that night, playing a string of unidentifiable and experimental records that began to test the limits of what can be played in a club and still make people dance. One track in particular jumped out as an especially unhinged number that coupled a 4/4 pulse with a polyrhythmic racket that sounded like a drugged up Keith Moon hammering away wildly on a electronic glitch-filled drum kit. It was a spectacular tightrope act, and one that stopped just before falling off into the precipice of wanton self indulgence.
With the music slowing down, you again got the feeling of being penned in. Both on the dance floor and anywhere you had a direct view of the DJ, you were likely to be in a battery hen situation. Those who had experienced Cocoon in a less packed environment earlier in the season or those who had any hint of claustrophobia quickly became frustrated by the sheer lack of space. At times rumblings of discontent could often be heard just under the music. Those who persisted with the night, however, were rewarded with a display on the Terrace that was of an improbably high quality—even by Ricardo and Luciano's standards.
With the club beginning to get a little less busy at around 7:30 AM, the DJ's on the Terrace began to really work their magic, creating a mix that seemed positively psychedelic. The structure of many tracks seemed to be entirely free form. Samples chattered away in the background, rhythms would emerge off bar and fluctuations of bass would leap from the speakers, knocking you sideways at the most unexpected moments. Beds of noise, off kilter sound effects and old school DJ tricks like stopping the vinyl, stereo panning and playing tracks backward were used skilfully to intensify the atmosphere. Quite simply this was Ricardo and co. playing music and trying things that only they can get away with to a crowd that was more than willing to let them do it.
Even at this late stage of the night, though, there were still more twists and turns to be had. At one point Luciano dropped De'Lacy's "Hideaway" into a typically percussion filled tech-house number. It was a move that—on paper—would seem crass and overly commercial, but it provided one of the most memorable moments of the night as the whole club totally lost it and a DJ box containing some of the world's most credible DJ's smiled, hugged and danced to one of the most well-known tracks in all of dance music.
During the final hours of the night Villalobos began to dominate more and more of the deck time, testing the audience's threshold for weirdness. At one point a record that contained little more than whistles of shrill microphone feedback and languid ticks of woodblock confused the audience to exactly the point before annoyance, only to bring everyone back on side with a cranium rocking 909. This was then followed with a moment of crazed ingenuity as Ricardo turned the volume down to a whisper, getting the crowd to clap along, before turning every knob up into the red—quite literally knocking one clubber in the vicinity of the DJ box on his back.
As the early morning sunlight began to stream into Amnesia, glinting off the masses of sweat-filled bodies still in the club, you got the feeling that this was the kind of clubbing experience that could only be delivered in Ibiza. The wide mix of continental, music-loving hedonists gave the party an energy that began to intensify at 6 AM and only peaked at around 11 AM—when hands were still being raised and cheers were continuing to go out with every twist and nuance of the music. As the night began to enter the home stretch, the DJ box on the Terrace swelled with dodgy looking techno miscreants. Lucaino and Zip pitched in the odd track to help out Ricardo and even Sven got in on the act dropping a twistedly percussive techno number to an enthralled crowd.
The night may have been both expensive, and at times uncomfortably busy, but Cocoon still managed to deliver on all of the high expectations placed upon it. The music was often confrontational in its experimentalism; at others it was simply irresistible in its ability to move the club as one. Cocoon's closing once again proved a potent reminder that Ibiza's very best clubs still have the potential to provide an experience quite unlike anything else you can find on the planet.