2011 has proven to be another extraordinary musical year in the lives of Cosmic Gate. It’s already brought the release of their early years retro-refit album ‘Back 2 The Future’ - singles from which took up residence in Beatport’s Top 10 for an unprecedented 3 straight months. They’ve also delivered their hugely received Essential Mix debut for BBC Radio 1 and have already brought the C.G. experience to close to a 100 clubs, arenas and festivals around the world.
Now, saving their biggest and best for last, they’re about to crown the year with the release of their new artist album entitled with the challenging title Wake Your Mind. The album includes the Beatport trance chart number 1 The Theme and 2010’s epic, majestic Barra. The most important part about is that Nic & Bossi collaborated with highly regarded and respected international artists such as Arnej, Myon & Shane 54 and Andrew Bayer and vocal team-ups with singers including Emma Hewitt, Aruna, JES, Cary Brothers, Cathy Burton, Alana Aldea and J'Something.
The album is already causing much discussion within the online EDM community and as it seems from their fans and not only reactions Cosmic Gate didn’t fail our expectations and they deliver a solid album with bouncy beats, sharp basslines, quality vocal tracks with deep and meaningful lyrics. Overall sounds to be contender of one of the best albums of 2011.So I decided to take this opportunity and request an interview from Cosmic Gate and Im so glad that despite their busy schedule manage to find the time to reply on it with so much detail and depth. What is more they offer us their own comment about each single track of the album so its great to get their own point of view about them and get informed about interesting backstage details about the production of this wonderful album that ask us to Wake Our Mind.
Interview is written and conducted by Dimitri Kechagias, Radio/ClubDj/Music Journalist
Dimitri: First of all I would like to start by asking you about the results of this year dj mag Top 100 djs pool. Do you feel satisfied by landing at number 43 of this list? As it seems the wider audience that participated prefer house more than trance and for that reason in my opinion house djs performed better than the trance ones. Is this growing popularity of house music influence at all your decision about your current sound at the moment in your productions and in your dj sets?
Cosmic Gate: About the dj mag list, we have not pushed for it at all, not put a big campaign into it like many others, so we think we can read this position or the list in general pretty well. It sure went through a change with so many house and hardstyle DJs inside this year, but as house is the biggest music for years, we expected this already earlier! So more or less we see it as a reflection of what is going on in the market for music styles in general, while regarding certain DJs, just to give an example, if a big star like Erik Prydz is ranked way under a newcomer DJ, this should tell us to see it as a list, something we all can discuss about, it keeps the scene alive and all of us a lot of things to talk when having a beer, but it is not the bible of the scene…
About the second part of your question, say as a producer and also a dj, you can not totally ignore the current sound, meaning the general direction music is going to. What we would never do is simply follow styles or trends blindly, we will always have our trademark sound, our ideas and visions about music, and always will simply follow our heart to create what we think is good music.
Dimitri: After a really successful compilation of some of your best tracks remixed by great new artists it was highly anticipated and is finally released your newest long player called Wake Your Mind. It would be great to tell us why you decide to name the album that way and to whom you suggest through your music to Wake their Mind?
Cosmic Gate: We think the album brings together quiet different styles of electronic music, and sometimes people especially in Europe stuck in their own scene, not accepting or listening to music out of this genre. We tried to break these boundaries with the album a bit, create an album for EDM fans in general, if they like trance, progressive even house. A lot of people wrote us that they actually are no big EDM or trance fans, but that they like the album, and all this is what we mean with Wake Your Mind, we try to reach people from different genres and hopefully get new people to be interested in the beauty of EDM music too. On top we finally wanted to let certain people know what we can do musically, people that think we and others still do hard trance like it was 12 years ago, and that maybe do not accept trance as they have a wrong idea about how diverse it can sound in 2011.
Dimitri: Of course you have released the past 11 years the top albums ‘Rythm & Drums’, ‘No More Sleep’, ‘Earth Mover’, ‘Sign of the Times’ and the top Back 2 The Future compilation. Can you please give us a short comment about each of those albums and if you can pin point to us the differences and similarities of those albums with your brand new album Wake Your Mind?
Cosmic Gate: We could talk for hours here about differences of music we did, similarity, changes, but we do not like to talk about our music too much, in the end for us the most important thing is that we create positive emotions with our music, make people happy, get them dance and enjoy, and as long as we do this and get positive feedback, we will go on, delivering the music what we think is right for the moment, coming out of our Cosmic Gate brain.
Dimitri: I wonder if the production of this album was done under certain tight time schedule and if you had a deadline for it to finish it or if you worked for tracks for this album randomly and when you had some ideas for tracks?
Cosmic Gate: For us, an album or a production is finished when it is finished, and so it was with Wake Your Mind. The production with the hectic travel and gig schedule we had finally took longer than we expected at first, but that’s how it is, quality comes first, and a song will not get out of the studio when we are not at least good or better happy with it!
Dimitri: It can be characterized as a vocal based album with just some instrumentals in it and the majority being vocal tracks. Is that mean that you are moving towards song centered albums rather than club focused ones? Do you think that this move will alienate your connection with your cool underground audience or there is no real division of what we call as underground or mainstream?
Cosmic Gate: We would count more than 5 instrumentals on Wake Your Mind, but we also would not make a difference of vocal or non vocal when it comes to underground or less underground status. It is about good music, not if its is referred overground or underground, different people have different feelings about this anyway, and we do not really care how people call the style we produce, as long as we are happy with the result of our music and get positive feedback from people that follow our idea and visions about music.
Dimitri: It would be great to offer us with your own words a short comment about each track of the album. Your comment can be about something that happened while you produce the album, your opinion and collaboration with your vocalists and anything else that will be always in your mind as a memory for that particular track.
01. Cosmic Gate & Arnej - Sometimes They Come Back For More
A bit oldschool from the harmonies, but still sounding fresh from the result, We thought a perfect opener.
02. Cosmic Gate & Emma Hewitt - Be Your Sound
Emma is simply fantastic, and if we knew one thing from the album, her and us were sure she will be part of this album again!
03. Cosmic Gate & Cary Brothers - Wake Your Mind
Big pleasure to work with these heroes that are totally out of our scene actually, loving the Vocals giving our album its name finally!
04. Cosmic Gate - The Theme
It started all when we mixed ASOT compilation for Armin and used the original Jurgen Vries in it, after we did a bootleg to play, this went off, and here we are with the Album release.
05. Cosmic Gate, Myon & Shane 54 and Aruna - All Around You
Many cooks, lead to a great song!
06. Cosmic Gate & Alana Aldea - Never Apart
Great new talent from Australia, she even delivered 2 more tunes that easily could have fit the album as well!
07. Cosmic Gate & J'Something - Over The Rainbow
The most housy song on WYM, we love the Soul in this South African guys voice, follow him on twitter, very funny too, lol
08. Cosmic Gate & Andrew Bayer - Nothing Ever Lasts
Andrew is simply fantastic and talented, so was his idea for our co operation,
Minimal and uplifting in one, is this possible!?
09. Cosmic Gate & Emma Hewitt - Calm Down
Emma is simply stunning, and as we could not decide between BYS and Calm down,
we had to release both.
10. Cosmic Gate - Barra
The only track we ever produced on tour, inspired by beautiful Barra in Rio de Janeiro, a classic already in our sets.
11. Cosmic Gate & Cathy Burton - Drifting Away
Just go with the flow of this one, as we did with the production
12. Cosmic Gate & JES - Flying Blind
We were planning to work together so long already, and finally it worked out, one of our personal favorites from the album.
13. Cosmic Gate - Perfect Stranger
First made as demo for vocals, but we soon felt its stronger without any additional on top, one of the first tracks we did end 2010.
14. Cosmic Gate & Alana Aldea - Beautiful Destruction
Been playing with this bassline for a while already, and Alanas Vocal were giving the last final touch for us!
Dimitri: There are many technology freaks who will read this interview and I’m sure that they would love to know about your studio. In what extent your current studio is different from the one that you use to produce the previous albums? Have you done any major changes in your studio and if possible to select your favorite piece of hardware and software that have as a result that unique and highly successful Cosmic Gate sound?
Cosmic Gate: Back for the first 2 albums it sure was the Roland JP 8000 that had a big influence on our lead sounds, while the last years we work a lot with the Virus ST. In general in the 90s we started more analogue, having a lot of synths and drum computers in the studio, while since quiet some years now we only work with digital plug-ins, so all is created in the computer in the end, no big studio space needed at all
Dimitri: You work together for so many years delivering one anthem after the other. I wonder if there was a moment that you had so big disagreements and maybe quarrel and you had come in the verge of splitting this project and carry on your separate projects?
Cosmic Gate: We are quite different personalities, but we do not even argue things actually, so a split or something was not even thought about ever, and we sometimes still have the time for a bit of solo or side work anyways, so all good, lol
Dimitri: The majority of the djs at the moment have their own record labels. I wonder if you have any plans to start again, after your top E-Cutz record label, a brand new personal record label with Black Hole recordings and release tracks from artists that you like because I’m sure that after so many years in the EDM music you have great knowledge, insight understanding of the best releases that you would like to put out.
Cosmic Gate: Problem with this label work is, that it always takes a lot of work and time, but as you said, maybe some bigger company like Black Hole takes the administration work and we just decide for the product to get released, time will tell if we get this road again, impossible is nothing!
Dimitri: Last question is one that I ask to every single artist that happens to interview and is about self-reflection and self-criticism. Out of 10 with what score do you rate the various elements of your dj performances and why?
Cosmic Gate:
a)your mixing skills: 9
b) your ability to choose the right track for the right occasion: 9
c) your friendly attitude towards the fans that are coming to shake your hand when you perform and after that?Between 7 and 10 depending on the amount of sleep we had, lol
b) your ability to choose the right track for the right occasion: 9
c) your friendly attitude towards the fans that are coming to shake your hand when you perform and after that?Between 7 and 10 depending on the amount of sleep we had, lol
Dimitri: Please give us your message to the people who will read this and also your piece of advice to all the new talents out there who would like to get a chance and get into the EDM scene as producers or djs?
Cosmic Gate: Always innovate, do not copy, create your own style you are standing for, be unique, for us the safest ways too succeed!!!
Many thanks to Nic & Bossi for finding the time to reply in my questions. Guys your album is ace!
Many thanks to Rabea Kusza at Kiss That Sound for her fantastic support through the years.
Many thanks to Jeroen at Black Hole recordings office for his excellent and efficient help to organize this interview.
Many thanks to Mark at Black Hole recordings office for his great support too. Black Hole family is rocking.
Forget what you think you know… and Wake Your Mind!
Cosmic Gate - Wake Your Mind Tracklist:
01. Cosmic Gate & Arnej - Sometimes They Come Back For More
02. Cosmic Gate & Emma Hewitt - Be Your Sound
03. Cosmic Gate & Cary Brothers - Wake Your Mind
04. Cosmic Gate - The Theme
05. Cosmic Gate, Myon & Shane 54 and Aruna - All Around You
06. Cosmic Gate & Alana Aldea - Never Apart
07. Cosmic Gate & J'Something - Over The Rainbow
08. Cosmic Gate & Andrew Bayer - Nothing Ever Lasts
09. Cosmic Gate & Emma Hewitt - Calm Down
10. Cosmic Gate - Barra
11. Cosmic Gate & Cathy Burton - Drifting Away
12. Cosmic Gate & JES - Flying Blind
13. Cosmic Gate - Perfect Stranger
14. Cosmic Gate & Alana Aldea - Beautiful Destruction
The CD is available at:
Finenight
Amazon
The download is available at:
itunes
Amazon
Beatport
Additional info:
www.cosmic-gate.de
www.blackholerecordings.com
www.facebook.com/blackholerecordings
www.facebook.com/pages/Cosmic-Gate-official/29828122258
www.twitter.com/RealCosmicGate
www.myspace.com/cosmicgate
