Interview with Cosmic Gate

A couple of weeks back we sat down with Nic Chagall and Stefan "Bossi" Bossems and got them to talk about their memories of the tracks the first time round and what inspired their remix choices for this album - Back 2 The Future. The album is released on Monday the 24th of January 2011.

Exploration of Space
Bossi: I remember the actual title was going to be E.O.S. – that’s what we started with.  
Nic: Yes, that’s right – true.
Bossi: We were still playing ‘Exploration’ in our recent sets a lot, but we were not really happy with the ‘sound’ of the original anymore. It was just too different from the rest of our playlist, and that’s why we decided to update and remix it for our own gigs.
Nic: After playing it, the reactions for this new mix were so good, that we actually started to think about maybe doing new reworks – that’s where the whole project came from.
Bossi: After some more brainstorming we decided to make a whole new album project out of this idea, that’s how everything surrounding ‘Back 2 the Future’ started...

Back To Earth
Bossi: Maybe our personal favourite package from the album, we play both mixes – Arty’s as well as Jochen Millers remix both in one set. They both have an ultimate energy for us,
Nic: and #1 and #5 on Beatport trance really went a long way to reinforce our opinion!
Bossi: Really awesome productions from these guys; we could not have wished for anything close to this!

The Drums
Nic: A co-operation with Markus Schulz was already working well when we swapped a mix with our Miami-based German friend for ‘Sign of the Times’, and we felt that his hitting sound would fit ‘The Drums’ perfectly
Bossi: Good opportunity this! Just to clear it up, ‘The Drums’ was the first Cosmic Gate track ever, and was the one produced by the total chance studio meeting the 2 of us had. It’s where the story of Cosmic Gate began!
Nic: On top of his mix we wanted to have something electro-ish and house-ish, because we felt it could fit good with the theme. As we liked and respected Robbie Rivera’s sound for years, we got in touch with him, and he really delivered
Bossi: Something for the tough ones, wauw!!

Fire Wire
Nic: Fire!
Bossi: … Wire!
Nic: Haha – I guess our especially-well-known-in-the-UK track!
Bossi: It got a top 10 national chart position there - we went to perform live on Top of the Pops – the UK’s most famous ever chart show.
Bossi: Ha – yeah! We arrived there and fans started to scream and get really nuts.
Nic: Definitely our first experience of that!
Bossi: They had no idea who we actually were! But it didn’t stop them asking for autographs and pictures - really a funny story to remember after all these years!
Nic: We thought that Fire Wire deserved the biggest Remix package we have from house to progressive to trance. Big names like Rank 1 and Wippenberg gave us the honour to put their
skills to it.
Bossi: We also dropped a new version and house-heads Delicious and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike with their awesome stuff coming on top. 
Nic: This track makes it pretty hard to choose which mix to play during our sets, as every single remix really offers new aspects on top of the known Fire Wire original.
Bossi: We are curious about other DJs choices!

Raging
Nic: Our co-operation with Jan Johnston; one of the few vocal tracks we did back in the days! Bossi: Jan is really a legend as songwriter and singer in the scene with her outstanding voice, and our mates from Duderstadt did a softer but still clubby new version, while new guy on the block Alexander Popov did a real (allow us to say this: Cosmic Gate-ish!) sounding tougher remix that is also working brilliant in the dub version.
Nic: We thought this title would be a good fit for the album, didn’t we?
Bossi: Yes. Maybe not being one of our best-known titles, but the remixes in our eyes show the real potential of the track.

Human Beings
Bossi: Our most Trance orientated release on ‘Back 2 The Future’ - 3 amazing remixes from Estiva, Arnej and Daniel Kandi; these all so talented young guns gave Human Beings a totally new feel for today’s club plays!

The Truth
Nic: This song always reminds us back to our first appearance @ Trance Energy in 2002. We played it as a world premiere there on the main-stage and it went off so well. Goose-bumps!
Bossi: goose-bumps time, it was! I remember coming home the next day and our guestbook was full with questions about the track
Nic: Yeah, a nice memory for us to think about, that.
Bossi: Cold Blue now made a very unique new mix, more uplifting then the original, a mix you can’t pigeonhole at all… and that’s meant as a big compliment!

Melt to the Ocean
Nic: The "B-side" to Exploration of Space. When we started, we were often working with what we called “double a-side singles” - 2 strong tracks that were first distributed only via vinyl.
Bossi: I remember that Fire Wire at first was only the second track on a vinyl EP. It was meant to be a pure club fun tune at the beginning - we never expected at all what happened with it after a while.
Nic: Melt to the Ocean also found a lot of fans, which meant that we also us enjoyed playing it a lot, and now JOC brought the vibe back with his uplifting 2011 version,
Bossi: The vocal sample idea is from a pretty famous German movie from the end 90`s.
Nic: Haha! Sometimes watching a movie at home aids production big time – Lol!