Sven Väth Announces Album, Celebrating Favourites From 1981-1990

Cocoon label founder Sven Väth unveils ‘What I Used To Play’, a 36-track deep dive into the music that defined his first decade as a DJ. After two and a half years in the making, it comes as an exclusive 12 x 12“ vinyl box set, with silver hot foil embossing and twelve individually coloured disco sleeves with full-size portraits of Sven from the 80s, and as an exclusive 3CD deluxe digipak release.

‘What I Used To Play’ is a collection of not only personal favourites for Sven, but a superb overview of musical highlights from the early days of electronic music between 1981 and 1990. The man has been at the forefront of global techno for 40 years as a DJ, producer, label head and notorious party promoter. February 2022 saw him release his first solo album in almost 20 years, and the 50th album to be released on his incomparable label.

He initially had a list of 120 tracks from the early 80s to Balearic late 80s together with excursions into afrobeat, European new wave, and EBM sounds and a few epochal techno and house tracks from the USA in between. Finally, after two years of research, curation, design, and administrative fine-tuning, the most important tracks from that playlist are now presented here.

‘What I Used to Play’ is the definitive record of Sven Väth’s musical development. On each of the twenty-four sides of vinyl, you can trace track by track, what influenced him during which phase, and how he took off as a DJ from his parents’ Queen’s Pub straight into the spotlight at Dorian Gray. There and at Vogue (which later became the famous OMEN Club), Sven became the scene-defining DJ that he remains today.

This collection takes in definitive music from the wild and innovative 80s when synth-pop, funk, hip-hop and disco were all known simply as ‘club music’. Italian-American duo Klein & M.B.O., the somber, monotonous anthem ‘Where Are You?’ by 16Bit, one of Sven Väth’s projects together with Michael Münzing, Luca Anzilotti from 1986, the timeless deep house of Frankie Knuckles feat. Jamie Principle’s ‘Your Love’, ‘No UFO’s’ by Detroit’s Model 500 aka Juan Atkins, electronic Afro-jazz pioneer Hugh

Masekela’s ‘Don’t Go Lose it, Baby,’ Andrew Weatherall’s classic remix of Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’ and Manuel Göttsching’s seminal ‘E2-E4’ plus Sven’s off-the-wall club hit ‘Electric Salsa’ with OFF in 1986 are just some of the very many tracks that tell the tale of these vital decades in dance music.

The album is available to pre-order here – https://www.cocoon.net/merch/pre-order