Sven Väth

Sven Väth was born on October 26, 1964 in Offenbach am Main, Hesse. He is a German DJ, music producer and label operator and is considered a popular representative of the techno genre. Väth has repeatedly been voted the best German DJ in reader surveys conducted by Groove magazine. In 2015, he was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt am Main.

Career

His career began in the mid-1980s with the OFF project, which he founded together with Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. The single Electrica Salsa was a great success. In the 1990s, he founded labels such as Eye Q Records and Harthouse. In 2000, he founded the Cocoon Recordings label. As a DJ at the Omen and Cocoon clubs, he shaped the nightlife of Frankfurt am Main for decades. From 1999 to 2019, Väth organized Cocoon parties in Ibiza during the summer months.

He is the second of three brothers and grew up in Obertshausen. His younger brother Mike Väth (* 1967) is also a musician, DJ and label operator.

Sven Väth began his career as a disc jockey in the Queens Pub in Neu-Isenburg, his parents’ dance club. After breaking off his apprenticeship as a locksmith, he started DJing there himself. In 1982, Väth became a DJ at Dorian Gray, a discotheque at Frankfurt Airport. There he attracted attention with his extravagant disguises and spontaneous dance interludes during his sets. In 1983, he began DJing at Vogue. At the time, Vogue was a very popular discotheque in Junghofstraße in Frankfurt’s city center. He became resident DJ there in 1984. Stylistically, Väth played disco at this time, soul and funk.

In 1985, he founded the OFF project with Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti (Snap!). The second single Electrica Salsa reached high chart positions throughout Europe. Väth returned to Dorian Gray in 1987 and replaced resident DJ Ulli Brenner. From then on, he played techno in the Belgian underground, later known as Electronic Body Music (EBM). He briefly tried his hand at producing this music himself (OFF: Be My Dream on the album Organization For Fun).

In 1988, Väth ended his work at Dorian Gray and spent a few months in Ibiza. On his return to Frankfurt am Main, he bought the Vogue premises together with Michael Münzing and Matthias Martinsohn. These were located on the first floor of a parking garage in Junghofstraße near the Hauptwache. They converted the building and opened it as Omen. The Omen closed ten years later on October 18, 1998.

The first wave of techno reached Germany in the summer of 1990. DJ Sven Väth switched from acid to techno and spread the new sound at Omen, his regular club. Together with Matthias Hoffmann and Heinz Roth, he founded the Eye Q Records label in 1992 and shortly afterwards Harthouse and Recycle or Die. Väth toured the world as a DJ. He also enjoyed commercial success in 1993-1994 with An Accident in Paradise and L’Esperanza. However, most of his music was tailor-made by other producers such as Stevie B-Zet or Ralf Hildenbeutel.

After the bankruptcy of his label conglomerate Eye Q Records/Harthouse, Väth founded the Cocoon party series in 1997. Initially, only three events took place in Frankfurt am Main, Munich and Copenhagen. From 1999, the parties continued under the name Cocoon Clubbing, initially only in Frankfurt’s U60311, later also in Stammheim in Kassel, Tribehouse in Neuss, Prag in Stuttgart and finally also in Amnesia on Ibiza. In the following years, the party series expanded to include the music label Cocoon Recordings and a booking agency.

On July 18, 2004, Sven Väth opened the Cocoon Club in Frankfurt’s Fechenheim district. The club set new trends in terms of interior design, sound system and gastronomy. The following December, the club was voted the best techno club in a reader survey conducted by Groove and Raveline magazines. The club had to close at the end of November 2012 after filing for bankruptcy.

Väth was part of the resident team at hr3 Clubnight between 1990 and 2003. On April 6, 2022, Sven Väth was the main act at the opening of the Momem – Museum of Modern Electronic Music in Frankfurt am Main in front of around 3,000 visitors. The museum is located directly below the Hauptwache building. The first special exhibition at Momem is dedicated to the life’s work of Sven Väth, a museum about the culture of techno music. The curator of the retrospective is the artist Tobias Rehberger.