Talking about “Materia” madness with… Cosmic Gate

We had the pleasure to talk with Nic & Bossi from Cosmic Gate about the their brilliant album “Materia” and much more! Enjoy reading!
 
TranceAttack: Hey guys, great to have you for some words. Where do we find you at the moment?
Cosmic Gate: Thank you very much, nice to meet you guys! We are home and preparing for our shows in LA and Vancouver, right after we head over to Europe for ADE and a few more shows that weekend in Europe as well.
 
TranceAttack: Congrats for the completition of your album “Materia” with the release of “Chapter.Two”. What was the idea behind the split into two parts?
Cosmic Gate: Well to explain at first, Materia is the Latin term for matter, so basically the substance that all things are made of, in the end the basics of everything around us and even ourselves as human beings. When we started on first songs and demos for the album we got a feeling that even with pushing musical boundaries further, the music is very fundamental Cosmic Gate, somehow very much us, a lot from our current sound, on top elements from say 5 to 7 years ago, but also reminiscing some of the beginning of Cosmic Gate as well, basically the best of our works during the years brought together, so musically essential Cosmic Gate somehow if we can call it like that maybe.

And to split it into two parts. In the end it was pretty simply, we had too many good tracks that we wanted to release and could simply not get them done on time to release all in one. Another reason why we actually like the concept to bring out two chapters is, that we give our fans more time to really explore the music on each Chapter. To release 17 tracks as we did with Start to Feel is great, but when people 4 weeks after release ask, so when do we hear new music, then us as the people that have been busting on the album for a year don’t really know how to react to such a question, as it’s a project that took all our heart, soul, energy and mostly creative potential for a year, its not like pushing a button and say, hey, there is more music for you… So yeah we spread the release, and hopefully got people after Chapter 1 excited and urge for Chapter 2 to be released.
 
TranceAttack: There are so many “unexpected” collaborations on the album. Are there “may be” some “unexpected” stories in the creating process with so many different artists?
Cosmic Gate: Every song indeed in its creation is a story of its own, which somehow with the release of the album and finding its way on it found its own happy ending. Producing and writing music simply isn’t like working in a kitchen and to cook following a recipe, songs can start in many different ways, even more when we have many friends and colleagues involved in the process that support us like on Materia. Tonight for example started after we sent Emma one of our Demos, and she said, hey I have this hookline here, but Im not sure its really down you guys road. But when we gave it a listen we liked it right away, and started working on it, sounding musically different than the demo we had in mind first, but yeah, this shows how things on a creative process can turn, but this keeps it interesting and exciting still after so many years in the studio, it never gets a routine or even boring!

TranceAttack: You’re in the business for more than 20 years. Especially in Germany there are not many trance artists who can look back to such a long and successful career. Is there a special “secret of success”?
Cosmic Gate: Well in the end this is not easy to answer, but one thing we believe in, is that we always in the end are ourselves, we write music that we feel is right, we do not follow trends or changing markets blindly. We simply always do us, Cosmic Gate, as we did with all albums before, so we did it with Materia once again. most Trance acts write uplifting 138, or Psy and Techy sound recently, while we, well, as said we didn’t care, followed our guts, we think its fair enough to say there is not another album out there with our kind of sound, the wide range of styles and feels, its different and unique, as our sound always was in the end…
 
TranceAttack: Trance has still not this big success in Germany like we can notice in other countries. All famous trance artists from Germany gain their success worldwide but less in their home country. Do you see a special reason why?
Cosmic Gate: The answer is both, very easy and sad in the same moment. Trance used to be big in Germany. it was played on Festivals and clubs till say 2002, but when the industry started to market the name Trance more and more (in reality selling cheap Dancefloor vocal tunes under the brand though) the market totally crashed after being blown up by major record companies and a lot of money involved, and when that bubble bursted, somehow a whole industry that Trance was a part of basically died within a very short period of time. After that Trance became a bad name in Germany, and still for a lot of people is until today unfortunately.
 
TranceAttack: Both of you live in the USA. How often are you back in your home town?
Cosmic Gate: When ever we have shows in Europe we use the chance to spent time with our families at our home towns, it never actually felt really like moving to a different continent ever, simply as we were in the US so much already all the time anyways. Plus when you see your people at home latest every two months, something like feeling homesick never even happened. Its really a great situation for us, basically taking the best out of both worlds and combine it, if we may say so.

TranceAttack: What were your personal goals for 2017 next to “Materia”?
Cosmic Gate: Tbh Materia with its 2 Chapters took a majority of our input and time, the tour, writing music, everything around it, we were pretty much focused and in the end, the great reception of Materia made all our personal goals for 2017 come true.
 
TranceAttack: What are your plans for the next months?
Cosmic Gate: We will continue the Materia tour part 2, there is still a few more nice unreleased Club and Remixes we are looking forward to share. Parallel we are brainstorming and working on future projects in the background already, let’s see what this will be, we keep you guys in the loop when the time is right. 🙂
 
TranceAttack: What are your favorite Trance Tracks at the moment? What are your favorite artists at the moment? Whom should we keep an eye on?
Cosmic Gate: Lets combine these questions by mentioning a few names, Andrew Bayer is always delivering, ilan Bluestone has some great new tunes on his soon to be released artist Album, Matt Fax is always doing great stuff for a while now, Australian Marcus Santoro is impressing specially on the Remix front, Estiva we feel has some brilliant tunes out now being a bit more progressive compared to the sound when he started…there is quite some names, we sure forgot quite a few worth mentioning, please listen to our weekly WYM radio show / podcast and you get a feel for the sound and names we dig.
 
TranceAttack: Thank you for the interview and all the best for the future!
 
Find all details for Cosmic Gate – Materia Chapter.One here:

 
Find all details for Cosmic Gate – Materia Chapter.Two here: