Review: Cocoon in the Park 2011

Date: 9th July 2011

Reviewed by: Dom Citarella

So, here we are again. Slap bang in the middle of the festival season at what must now be considered one of the heavyweights on the festival calendar – particularly in the dance music world – Cocoon In The Park.

In past years CITP has seen the likes of Luciano, Loco Dice, Ricardo Villalobos and Adam Shelton grace the hallowed turntables, all made possible by a dream team of German Genius and head of the label Cocoon Sven Vath – who also plays a marathon set each year – and Leeds based club night System. Now in its third year CITP will again see some of the biggest names in tech house along with 10,000 or so eager enthusiasts descend on Temple Newsam in Leeds for what in my opinion easily holds its own to the Ibiza and Frankfurt Cocoon counterparts.

Temple Newsam isn’t exactly the kind of setting you would imagine piling up stacks of Funktion One speakers and letting loose a group of the most elite DJs in the world, what with it being set within a 1500 acre 18th century parkland with a 300 year old Tudor mansion towering over the site.But  CITP does just that, and I think it’s fair to say they nail it.

Opening proceedings at a sickeningly early time of 11am was Detroit’s best export in years, Seth Troxler. He’d obviously taken note of the fact that at this time in the morning his audience was made up of early risers and leftovers from the night before. The set began with pleasantly deep soulful house and pushed sluggish heavy basslines to ease people nicely into a long day. It was an expertly thought through set which went down extremely well with the crowd (almost as well as the strawberry cider at the bar).

The job of keeping things progressing was down to German producer Reboot. Unfortunately it has to be said he didn’t do the best job of this. Granted there were a few issues with the sound occasionally cutting out, but even without that it was a rather stale and lifeless set. The only thing that would have saved the set was when the crowd did a DC10 style sit down for Caminando; however even this didn’t exactly go smoothly with a lot of people standing before the drop.

Up next was the Chilean Ricardo Villalobos who is easily big enough to headline any festival, if of course he wasn’t playing alongside one of the organisers. Playing tunes like MDMA, Sound Of Violence and the ever controversial I Feel Love Villalobos easily picked the crowd up. Of course there were a few slips of records that have been played hundreds of times but it wouldn’t be a Villalobos set without them.

The crowd, now ready for the taking, were given Mr. Sven Vath. He took the crowd on a journey beginning with deep and melodic tech, opening with the likes of Caribou 'Sun' and Umek 'Fire Fight'. This all changed once the sun went down and everything seemed to go up a notch; the music turned into heavy electronica, the pyrotechnic guy had obviously gone insane and even the volume seemed to have impossibly increased a few decibels. The track of the set and in my opinion the entire day was when he played Azari & III 'Hungry For The Power' (someone had to!)

Overall an incredible day out and well worth the £45 ticket price. See you in 2012!

Tickets are no longer available for this event