Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010

Frankfurt native Sven Vath started his career as a composer of some of the most cutting-edge techno to be heard in the first part of the ‘90s, but like many electronica artists he’s morphed into a fulltime DJ and impresario.

For this writer, Vath’s crystalline 1995 outing The Harlequin, the Robot, and the Ballet Dancer was one of the defining techno discs of the decade, but these days he’s better known as the force behind Frankfurt club and record label Cocoon.

Cocoon is one of dance music’s marquee brand names, and one that Vath has brought to Tokyo on numerous occasions. The label has supported the careers of the likes of Richie Hawtin and Ricardo Villalobos, and is also the platform for Vath’s In the Mix series, which documents Cocoon’s playlists each summer in its residencies on the Spanish party isle Ibiza.

Vath’s remarkable tenth In the Mix: The Sound of the Tenth Season shows Cocoon going in a more eclectic direction, with big house anthems knocking up against the more familiar banging techno that the label is known for. For heads, there’s also a bonus DVD in which Hawtin and Vath discuss the role of Cocoon Ibiza in disseminating the minimal techno boom beyond Germany. They might have also mentioned Cocoon’s massive New Year’s bashes at Womb…

Also part of the Germany-Japan techno connection (she shares her time between Berlin and Tokyo) is one of the few female producers on the scene, local laptop maestro Akiko Kiyama. Born in Tokyo in 1982—the same year Sven Vath made his DJ debut—Kiyama caught the techno bug at the top of the millennium and began to create PC-based productions.

Her initial releases appeared on Sud Electronic in 2004 and in 2008 she dropped her first full-length, 7 Years (on the District of Corruption label), which summed up seven years of dance music creation. Kiyama performs live on a laptop, and by the sound of her latest track “Flesh Got Spirit,” at Module’s Modulation event she’ll be purveying throbbing heartbeat bass lines topped up with off-kilter melodic bleeps and the occasional hint of a vocal sample…

Those with a bit of time on their hands may want to check out a new website put together for the Japanese market by Canada Dry and Canadian downtempo/electronica imprint Interchill Records. Created by local Interchill rep Dominic Allen, the website (www.canadadry.jp) allows visitors to create their own playlists from the Interchill catalog with an interactive CD player, as well as download two remixes of Allen’s.

Womb
Sven Vath in the Mix: The Sound of the 10th Season Release Party. Techno: DJs Sven Vath, etc. Feb 6, from 11pm, ¥4,000. Shibuya. Tel: 03-5459-0039. www.womb.co.jp