Clubbing Magazine

Cosmic Gate – The Gate to hell

The two spinning producers Bossi and Nic behind the ever so popular German hard-trance act Cosmic Gate, that are expected to ensnare the world in a second darkness with their new album – ‘No more sleep’, sat down to have a chat with Clubbing Magazine about how they got together, their success and their second album.

Ralf: You two got together a few years ago, what’s the story behind that?
Bossi: I was working for a record company and Nic was the producer behind one of the acts we signed. We met at a club, talked, and then we did a remix together with two other guys. When they left we had some more time and after a few hours the first Cosmic Gate, ‘The Drums’, was produced. But back then we didn’t think of it as a Cosmic Gate production. We just put it in a box for two months then we played it to a friend that said that it was nothing. But after about eight weeks I called him up again and said, “I’ve listened to the track again, I like it” and he said, “I like it too”. We sent it to three record companies and the next day we got three calls, EMI won us over. We were just searching for a name, so it wasn’t really a plan, Cosmic Gate was just one of many projects.

Ralf: How do you think you’ve developed your sound from the start up to today?
Bossi You have to develop, and it’s been four years since we started. If you don’t develop and always stay the same people get tired of you. You have to see that the world is turning and you have to follow, or better to lead. That’s why I think we change our style a little for sure.

Ralf: Do you have in mind what kind of sound you’ll have in 1-1½ years?
Bossi: If someone knows what sound there will be in two or maybe three years he’s lucky, for he will be the first for sure. To be honest I don’t think about this too much, it’s always small steps that you don’t notice that much. But when you’ll look back in two-three years you see that it changed for this. It’s loads of small steps, so maybe you don’t even know that you change.

Nic: When we play our first song, ‘The Drums’ nowadays, we just wonder how it sounds. People go like “What’s this bass sound? It sounds like shit!”

Bossi: It’s 3½ years old and it sounds like shit, and that is the development that we’re talking about.

Ralf: ‘The Drums’ was from your first album. What kind of change do you see in your new album ‘No more sleep’ compared to the first?
Bossi: I personally don’t see a big change; we tried to have the big range – a little more and a little wider. Because on the first album there was no real vocal song, I wouldn’t call ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ one. We’re just tired to listen to albums that hold ten trance songs in the same range

Ralf: Are you more satisfied with the new album?
Bossi: I think we’re a little more satisfied. The first album was the first album and for the second album you have more experience, and we could have taken the range even wider for sure. We could have done break-beats or stuff like Tiësto and Oakenfold produce. I think this is what the people can expect from us as Cosmic Gate and I think we both are quite happy about it. We really enjoyed producing it, and I hope people really can hear that we had fun doing it.

Ralf: You have this vocal track with Jan Johnston on your new album. It’s not really your kind of style, how did you end up together?
Bossi: I met her in Boston in United States. Someone brought me to the airport and picked her up, so we just met for five minutes. I said “Hi, we are planning to do the album the next months, what about you, do you want to make a track together with us” and she said something like “Yeah sure, I know of you guys”. We exchanged e-mail addresses, Nic and I made the background production, sent it to her, she did the vocals and sent it back and we produced the track. So it was quite easy. And we love the track, it’s one of our favourites because it’s a little bit different, and we want to show that we can make it in a different style too.

Ralf: Once you’ve finished a production, do you take it out to test it on the crowd to get feedback or do you just go with your feeling and release it?
Nic: We have actually never changed anything in our productions. After a while you know if it’s working or not. If it’s not too strange, you don’t change it.

Bossi: Yeah, you can make it too perfect. We always do a track in two days, unless it has vocals because that needs a lot of work.

Ralf: Does that mean you have a lot of tracks in your back catalogue that never have been released?
Bossi: There’s not one production we’ve done that hasn’t been released. Cosmic Gate is just 20% of the time in the studio, perhaps even less.

Ralf: Have you ever thought of having another act together, besides Cosmic Gate?
Bossi: There’s no time, and it would just feel like Cosmic Gate part two. Sure, if it was about some shitty commercial project we could do it, but it would feel wrong. If we do something like trance together it will always be Cosmic Gate.

Interview by: Ralf Elfving

Interview done in August 2002.