Las Vegas Weekly

June 19, 2009 · 12:43 PM

A sign of the times: legendary trance duo Cosmic Gate finally comes to Vegas

By Deanna Rilling

DJ Bossi and Nic Chagall

If you have no idea why dance music fans are geeking out over the news that trance duo Cosmic Gate is coming to town, read on. And if you’ve been a loyal follower of Nic Chagall and DJ Bossi (né Claus Terhoeven and Stefan Bossems), since their first EP in 1999, this is for you, too. Either way, if you feel like dancing this weekend, put the producers’ DJ set at Moon Sunday night on your “to do” list because they're coming to Vegas in support of their new album, Sign of the Times.

A trance headliner in Vegas is almost unheard of. For someone who has never ever heard of Cosmic Gate, why should they check you out at Moon on Sunday?

Bossi: To experience something totally new and totally rocking and not the same top 40 stuff over and over again. People want to see something new, and we are definitely something to watch out for.

You just began the Sign of the Times tour and are doing 14 shows in four weeks. What we can expect to hear?

Nic: A lot of tracks from our new album, which was just released in the States, and some of our own remixes. But we also have a lot of new stuff from other producers.

Bossi: We also have to say we are very excited to be coming to Vegas for the first time to DJ and we are really looking forward to the show and free days after that we fortunately have, so it’s going to be one of the highlights of the tour. Like Nic said, loads of new productions, remixes, tracks from the album, some classics. We are looking forward to a great night.

Tell me a bit about the new single “Not Enough Time” and collaborating with Australian singer Emma Hewitt?

Nic: “Not Enough Time,” the instrumental demo, was one of the last ones we did, … We sent it out to Emma because we heard about her voice and we loved it so much. When she sent back a demo with her vocals, we were like, “Wow!” We were really overwhelmed.

On your first two albums, you didn’t work with singer/songwriters, but that changed with your third album, Earth Mover. What was the decision behind that and how do you think it’s changed your sound?

Bossi: It wasn’t a decision where we said, “Okay. Now we work with singers.” The first album was nearly 10 years ago—such a long time. We always try to develop our sound and bring it to the next step and we always just produce what we really like, what we see is the Cosmic Gate sound of now. It’s not like something that we decided to add; it’s just something that we feel.

What about live? Are you incorporating programs like Serato or Ableton, or do you stick to DJing strictly on CDJs, sans laptop?

Nic: CDJs.

Bossi: Which is already kind of old school.

Nic: We don’t like to search for tracks in the computer.

Bossi: It was even a hard step from vinyl to CDs, but I think to play with the computer or something? That’s not us right now. You never know what happens in the future, but right now we don’t like it.

How do you think the popularity of trance is doing worldwide?

Bossi: We have the feeling that trance actually is coming back. The last year, house and especially electro house was taking over.

Nic: It’s kind of weird. The biggest DJs in the world from the rankings are trance DJs. But actually, trance isn’t the biggest music, especially not in the last years, club-wise. Many big house producers, they produce very trance-orientated tracks these days. Everything’s moving in circles and we have the feeling trance is really coming back and we hope it’ll be the next big thing again.

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