Renato Cohen is a Paulista, which means in Portuguese, a person from Sao Paulo, Brazil, a 17 million souls megalopolis of contrasts, where he was born in 1974 and where he has been living since then. His music career started in 1996, at a time when Brazil was completely out of the world electronic music scene and when being a DJ meant that you had to fight your way every Saturday to be able to play Techno to an audience that did not have a clue of what electronic music was. It's in this difficult context that Renato elaborated his own mixing technique, enticing, energetic and positive, to welcome the Brazilian young club scene to the new electronic music world.
He quickly became renowned all over Brazil for his striking live performances, bringing the whole studio to the stage, in a time when laptops were rarely used. In addition, Renato started several DJ residencies in some of the most famous clubs of Brazil, including "A Loca" during the early days, the infamous "Lov.e" during the Brazilian electronic music boom of the beginning of the 2000's and nowadays at the massive "Clash Club". With his own unique way of mixing styles, from House to Techno and influences of Funk and Jazz, the young Paulista had only one goal but to create a clear Brazilian electronic music identity, not through musical clichÈs but in order to build up a happy and enticing atmosphere, led by the idea that music must always bring something good to people and make their lives better. He quickly became one of the biggest electronic music figure in the country and his early productions became very known by the audience, with his tracks used in advertising campaigns of brands such as Coca-Cola and Toshiba. He also worked in other different artistic projects, including remixes for the worldwide hit movie "City of God", soundtracks for modern dance shows and score for an Alexandre Herchcovitch's fashion show.
His international career took off in 2002, with the release on Carl Cox's label Intec of the worldwide hit PontapÈ, which sold over 50000 copies. It's with this track that the world finally discovered that Brazil was on the map of electronic music. The success of PontapÈ led Renato to the most famous clubs all over the planet, such as Fabric (London), Womb (Tokyo), Space (Ibiza), Fuse (Brussels), Rex (Paris), Berghain (Berlin), and key festivals in the likes of Wire (Japan), Dance Valley (Netherlands), I love Techno (Belgium), Nature One (Germany), Awakenings (Netherlands), Skol Beats (Brazil), May Day (Germany), Creamfields (Argentina), Love Parade (Berlin), Two Tribes (Australia), Electromind (Montpellier), Monegros (Spain) and so on and on... From that point on, Renato Cohen released several other EPs on the label Sino as well as on his own Popero. He also participated to several remix projects for popular artists such as Chris Liebing on CLR, Len Faki on Figure and Technasia on several occasions (including for the latest single Oxide).
It's in 2007, after more than 10 years of production and performances, that Renato felt he finally reached the maturity and level of eclecticism required to work on a bigger scale project. He spent the next two years working on the production of his first album, 16 Billion Drum Kicks. With the mainstream Techno style moving to a minimal, darker and melancholic sound, the album finds an alternative, conveying a global positive mood and dancefloor energy. It is an experiment that combines organic sounds with electronic music and features many Brazilian Jazz and Samba musicians, such as the 60 years-old Samba-Rock legend Marku Ribas on the track Cosmic Man, and the well-respected trombone player Bocato, in an unexpected Samba-Jazz version of PontapÈ. Techno producer and long-lasting friend Technasia also collaborated closely with Renato at the different stages of the production of the album, including mixing and mastering. It's with this project that the two fellas realised they could bring the collaboration to the next level, and came up with the idea of a Live/DJ performances series entitled Sino Live!, a mix of mashups of their original tracks together with loop and re-edits of well-known Techno classics. The newly formed duo performed during summer 2008 at several festivals, including Monegros (Spain), Electromind (France) and Wire (Japan).