Cosmic Gate -
Back To The Future

31.01.2011

Picture this… Around the millennium you kick-off your studio career with, what turns out to be, some substantially large dancefloor hellraisers. 7 or so years on you decide those tracks could do with some regenerative remakes and set about getting new remix moves being put on them. As luck/fate/fortune/call-it-whatcha-want has it, you've become hot property over the decade – hot enough in fact to be able to call in the current cream of the remix crop to rework them. Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it?

That though was the where Cosmic Gate found themselves this time last year. Regularly inundated by requests to play the early material they still loved, Nic Chagall & Bossi were nonetheless finding it harder and harder to programme them into their sets. Their workaround was devilishly simple and lies behind the multi-coloured triangulations of 'Back 2 The Future's cover. The double-disc album's subtitle: 'The Classics From 1999 -2003 Remixed' explains all.

Gareth Emery

Getting the ball rolling with a couple of C.G. reworks (on 'Fire Wire' and 'Exploration of Space'), they demoed them with agreeably combustible results. It was from there that the idea sprung to go 'all-in' with an album.

Released in 5 fortnightly intervals, the singles have left a Cosmic Gate shaped vapour trail across the Beatport chart. Quite incredibly there's been a remix from 'Back 2 The Future' sitting pretty in the Top 10 every day for nigh on 3 months. Surely some kind of record! Trance International really must look into that.

The remix spread has been intuitive. Tough-stuff to keep the die-hards burning up shoe rubber? You betcha. Diverse genre variance to usher house, electro & progressive tribes in? No problem - Robbie Rivera, Dirty Herz, DJ Delicious, Wippenberg and Dmitry Vegas & Like Mike all standing tall there. And the full range of other trance disciplines - euphoric, deep and melodic – all get full ear-service too, with Markus Schulz, Arnej, John O'Callaghan and Arty delivering in spades…

Range - that's 'Back to the Future's mojo and its as key to what Cosmic Gate do musically as ever before. 'Back 2 The Future's out now.

cosmic-gate.de
blackholerecordings.com/

Black Hole have given us the nod on 10 signed copies of B2TF to give away. All you have to to do to be in with a chance of snaffling one of them is tell us which of the following ISN'T the name of a Cosmic Gate album?

1) Earth Mover
2) Sign of the Times
3) A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld

You can get Cosmic Gate 'Back 2 The Future' now via the following links:

iTunes // Beatport // Black Hole Recordings Shop // Amazon //
Audiojelly // Trackitdown // Juno Download //

Northern Lights

Gareth Emery's
'Northern Lights' Album

24.09.2010

A well-known dance act of yesteryear once famously said "It’s Grim Up North”… The North being referred to was the North of England and if they still hold the opinion, well it’s one Gareth Emery probably differs with. After all you don’t adopt somewhere as a new home-base and call your first artist album ‘Northern Lights’ unless you’re sort of feeling the place. Another mantra, from broadly the same time, was ‘Manchester: dance capital of England’. It was back then and via the cumulative effects of Emery's Top 10 standing, the Garuda club nights & now ‘Northern Lights’, its glory is busily being restored.

Yes, it’s taken a while to get his first long-playing oeuvre to the expectant shelves, but have a heart, the lad’s been busy. Given that his passport’s been checked going in and out of 30 different countries over the first 6 months of 2010 it’s perhaps small wonder that it’s even landing now. Plus… you rush these things at your peril: fan expectation… not a state to be trifled with.

Gareth Emery

In terms of the tracks ‘Northern Lights’ contains - a compact 10 in total - it looks like there’s been some judicious editing on the album. That, we’re happy to say, is born out on first listen... Right through to track 7 your mind is not allowed to wander from the music once. No drifting away, no off-the-ball phase-outs; ‘Northern Lights’ is an attention-demander the likes of which we haven't heard in ages. The second listen gives you the chance to analyse (or at least begin to analyse) why that is. From the beeping, mutated time-signal intro to ‘Stars’; the shifting, unusual cadence of ‘El Segundo’s riff and the imaginative shudder-judder beats of ‘Too Dark Tonight’, the album is just doing things differently. Not contrary different, but interesting-different – and giving it plenty-of. ‘Northern Lights’ seems to have been constructed from the M.O. of a James Patterson novel. Nothing interesting or exciting happened in the last 30 seconds? Go back - find something - put it in.

So what happens at track 7 then? Well ‘Sanctuary’ happens… Gareth’s Beatport-busting & Y.T. view-smashing current single has stirred the trance waters deep of late. 150,000 YouTube hits in 48 hrs on the official video and (as Trance International’s web page refreshes) both mixes still sitting pretty in the top ten of Beatport’s trance chart. It’s a reception reserved for precious few singles every year.

‘Northern Lights’ doesn’t play like one of those clever-clever artist-cum-mix-albums. The tracks are clearly defined, standalone entities and made to be enjoyed as such. As it hits its home straight however you can’t help but notice this is where the uplifting (and more vocal) material is housed. ‘All Is Now’, ‘Fight the Sunrise’ and ‘Citadel’ all line up aiming to send the listener 'home' with a smile.

We’ve got 10 signed copies of ‘Northern Lights' to give away to Trance International readers, but as ever, we’re going to make you work just a little bit for them. We want you to e-mail the office and tell us what is the name of the club in Manchester where Gaz’s Garuda nights are held? It was voted the no.1 in the world by DJ Mag this year, so that should give you a bit of a clue!

‘Northern Lights’, the debut album for Gareth Emery is out on the 23rd of September through Garuda Recordings.

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garethemery.com/northernlights
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