Cosmic Gate: “The loyalty of our Australian fan-base is always something very special to us”

Cosmic Gate have proved to be the perfect alliance of musical minds.

Nic & Bossi’s behind-decks-brotherhood has now created floor-frisson at an uncountable number of countries. They’ve sold out arenas, conquered electronic music capitals, and spun at a litany of major festivals.

The German duo will hit our shores this week for a massive five-city Aussie tour, promoting their latest album ‘Start To Feel’. Labelled by music bible MIXMAG as “stylistically fearless, panoramic, astonishing and a hallowed height of perfection”, Cosmic Gate’s ‘Start To Feel’ seemed to reach the ‘legendary’ status in no time. The illustrious duo emerged from within the Trance genre with their own, iconic sound and created an album of unparalleled magnitude.

The ‘Start To Feel’ album tour will reach Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and hit the harbour city on July 4 for one of Australia’s biggest annual trance events, Genesis White – an event no trance fan should miss. As part of the lead-up to this exciting tour, we caught up with the legends for in-depth interview.

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Hey Nic & Bossi, we’re thrilled to see you back in Australia for the ‘Start To Feel’ album tour! What do you look forward to each time you visit our shores?

“We have been coming to Australia for many years, for over more than a decade. The loyalty of our Australian fan base is always something very special to us. This time, we will play the biggest amount of gigs, and upgrade to larger venues from previous years, so we are extremely looking forward to coming back and finally play solo shows again after being only part of festival tours since 2012.”

What’s the best way to stay sane on the road?

“Good question 🙂 …we simply try to keep our sense of humor, laugh about things even when something goes wrong or the level of exhaustion is very high, let things get not too close to us, focus on the positive, negativity won’t win!”

Next year will mark 15 years since the release of your debut album, ‘Rhythm & Drums’. Does it seem that long to you both? How have you both evolved since then?

“It somehow seems like forever, on the other hand time flies so fast when you live on the fast lane as we do, travelling so much, but we simply love what we do, so it does not feel that long at the same time, as weird as it sounds.”

“Listen to Rhythm & Drums and Start to Feel…the question is easily answered as the sound is simply totally different, BUT, no matter if we worked with 140 beats back then or 128 nowadays, our Cosmic Gate handwriting is all over both albums. You can hear its us in each track on either release, and this is what counts in the end…the Cosmic Gate feel.”

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What did you want to do differently on the ‘Start To Feel’ album from all previous releases?

“At the end of doing a new album, we always want to do the same…which is simple as it might sound, is to write good music. M that touches us at first, music that we like, that we think is the music that will touch people too, or make them dance, sing along, touch their soul hopefully. Not less or more than that, and in the end we think this is what counts for most musicians or songwriters.”

“Regarding Start To Feel, we wanted to be different than all that overwhelming EDM sound. We wanted to show that its doable to sound modern and stay relevant, but still put a lot of emotion and feel in a track. Create music that lasts and still matters hopefully in years time. For us, we think all these attributes are missing in EDM tracks these days, they’re all mostly drop-focused EDM tracks.”

Were there frustrating moments making this album?

“These moments always happen when you write music…when you have the feeling you are stuck with a track, or a collaboration partner is not feeling the same about a track as you do. But in the end, there is always a solution. Most of the time we put the music aside for a while when we do feel this way at a certain time, and the next time, with “fresh ears” (as we say), we find solutions more easily. Frustration can turn into enthusiasm pretty fast.”

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Do you feel that an album gives you the best way to tell your story, rather than releasing singles?

“Oh absolutely, we do!”

“An album leaves us way more space to write music that is different and express ourselves as artists. If we released certain tracks as singles, it wouldn’t of have have been produced the same way as we would have for an album, so again, yes, we love albums because they give us the option to write different music. We certainly will stick to it to, and not cut off our artistic freedom and fun to write music that is different. Abums hopefully help us to stay fresh and sound different.”

The success that accompanied ‘Falling Back’ must have been really exciting. How did the track with Eric Lumiere come about?

“Well, what can we say…we worked with Eric like with most of the other songwriters and singers. We wrote a demo, he wrote the lyrics on top of our music, he sent it back, we loved it but asked for a few little changes, and continued to work on it together to the point of how you know the track from its release now. Eric really nailed it here with his performance and songwriting. A track working great in the radio and clubs out of the trance genre does not happen too often, so indeed it was an exciting release and co-operation with him.”

“Eric will join us for our Tour to Australia, and so will Jes…we are very excited to have these talented folks with us, giving another extra to our DJ shows with their excellent live performances.”

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For upcoming Aussies producers, is there a Cosmic Gate sound design or production secret you’d like to share?

“We actually don’t have a production secret, sorry…in general we think every producer has to find the equipment that suits him best. It’s all about experimenting and finding the right equipment, learn to use the gear to perfection if possible. What works for others, may not always do the trick for you and vise versa.”

Have you both begun working on new music?

“Yes, we are, solo tracks as well as several exciting collaborations are in the making, we are sure the one or other track might be tested on our Australian tour already!”

What are you most excited about the upcoming five-city Aussie tour?

“Simply the amount of shows, we never played 5 shows on a solo tour, this is great for us, as said we play bigger venues and have Jes and Eric Lumiere with us live on stage for support, we are sure it will be a great experience for every fan of Cosmic Gate and hopefully new fans in the making.”

Any last words to your Australian fans?

“It’s been too long since we had proper solo shows in Australia, so we are so much looking forward to hitting your shores again and party together, see you very soon, do not miss it!!!”

Visit our Aussie Trance Event Guide here for further info on Cosmic Gate’s Australia 2015 tour and click here to purchase Genesis White tickets.

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