Interview with Cosmic Gate

[commando]

German duo Cosmic Gate emerged in 1999 when DJ/remixer Claus Terhoeven (born 1972; aka Nic Chagall) and Stefan Bossems (born 1967; aka BOSSI) decided to assemble a new project in the electronic music field. Cosmic Gate debuted with the release of the club/dance-oriented "The Drums." "Mental Atmosphere" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" followed soon after. Their breakthrough came after issuing the Top Ten single "Fire Wire." Locally released in 2000, the song started climbing the U.K. charts in 2001 and became a summer smash in the European club scene. Exploration of Space followed a year later, featuring the original version and DJ Isaac remixes of "The Truth."

Individually, Bossi and Nic Chagall have been prolific producers under many guises, including Green Court, Strings Of Harmony, Astral Inc, Mirabeau and MDMA. Working together, they have emerged as new champions of hard trance. CHOICE speaks to Bossi as they prepare to hit Rise in Australia:


There's no doubt that the hard trance sound of Cosmic Gate is perfectly suited to rocking bigger dancefloors, and Bossi reckons he doesn't feel any nerves when he's facing a really huge crowd. "No, it makes you feel... I don't want to say proud, but it is such a nice feeling playing when we played first time at the party that I spoke about before like Trance Energy. You are standing there, you have got all the big lasers going and you are looking at all the people and you can't even see the end of the hall because it is about 100 metres and about 20,000 people all looking in your direction. It's a wonderful feeling, it's unbelievable, especially if they go wild to a track that you have produced by yourself. Yeah, it's a wonderful feeling."

Bossi says he was working as A&R manager for the X-IT record label in Cologne, when he met Chagall. Chagall "was the producer for a track that I had signed and that's how we met. Then we did a remix together for another project, that was the first time that we went to the studio, but we couldn't finish this track because we had problems with the vocals. We called the producer and said 'Hey you have to put the vocals again 'cause this is just not working.' Then it was two or three in the afternoon and the other guys that we had been working with left and we said 'Well what are we going to do?' And then we did a track within three or four hours and it was the first Cosmic Gate. So it wasn't planned at all, and it was a massive hit, it was The Drums."

No one could have anticipated the success of that first single, and since then things have only grown bigger. They quickly followed up with the Mental Atmosphere, but it was the third single Somewhere Over The Rainbow/Fire Wire which saw Cosmic Gate cross over into the mainstream awareness, with massive exposure on dancefloors all over the world, and even commercial radio. It seems that the world is once again ready to embrace some hard, percussive, hands-in-the-air trance, and Cosmic Gate have managed to keep themselves at the top with their follow-up, Exploration Of Space, which has been just as huge a hit as Fire Wire.

"I really do not care about names," says Bossi, "some people call it hard trance, some people like the Fire Wire track call it hard house, we really do not care. You either like it or you don't like it, we always say call it whatever you want, the most important thing is that you like it."

One thing Bossi can agree on is that it's got to have the sort of energy that sets the heart pumping and puts a smile on your face. "This is what we think is quite important, this is really what comes from the inside we need the kicking bass drum and the bassline and I think the energy is quite important. If it's harder like Firewire or more trancy like Exploration Of Space or if it is really like a vocal track like we did together with Jan Johnson, for our last single, Raging, it has to be full of energy, I think dance music has to be really kind of energetic music and that is what we think is very important."

[DIONYSOS]

Cosmic Gate featuring Jan Johnston ~ Raging Storm