Utter the name Cosmic Gate in trance circles and you’ll most likely hear the words ‘icon’ and ‘legends’ spoken in the same breath. You might also hear mention of trance ‘back in the day’. But don’t be fooled. Cosmic Gate are still well and truly on the scene, and what’s made them such an enduring presence is their ability to change things up, go with the flow and take trance in exciting new directions. They’ve just released a new double album Back to Back 3, and are constantly jetting the globe, with recent shows in far flung countries like Mexico and Malaysia. And they’ve just hit our shores for New Year’s parties across the nation.

For readers who didn’t already know about Cosmic Gate, you’ll hopefully have a better idea now. The duo is made up of two German friends, Claus Terhoeven (known also as Nic Chagall) and Stefan Bossems (or Bossi). In their opinion, the friendship is a strong one indeed. “We’ve been doing it for nearly ten years together. It’s never getting boring, and we do everything together!” You’d have to say that any friendship or partnership that’s lasted that long must be unique, and you can bet they’ve witnessed some dramatic changes in the music industry along the way. “That’s a story we could talk for ages about. But the major change is that the style [trance] now is a lot more mixed.”

And Cosmic Gate have adapted to these musical changes in their most recent release, titled Back to Back 3. “The idea behind it is always to give a reflection of the sets we play. We wanted it to sound like we were playing for four or five hours in a club: you can listen to it back to back. We made two CDs because we wanted the first one to be more proggy/techy, and the second to be uplifting.”

Looking at their recent gigs, a recent show in Rotterdam was one of those ‘journeys’ that they speak of. The ‘Full on Ferry’ party, where Cosmic Gate played alongside Ferry Corsten, was a huge success, and beyond all the over-the-top production nand pyrotechnics it was also memorable for the fact that they performed alongside vocalist Denise Rivera. “It was the first time we’ve played live with Denise singing. It was just great. We flew in on a flying DJ stage! We did a remix of Ferry years ago, so we tried to tell the story backwards… We played backwards in time…”

But of course, not all gigs run are going to run as smoothly as this? The boys recount one of their recent ‘gigs gone wrong’, last time they were here in Australia no less! “In Perth, the whole sound system stopped working. The monitors kept working, so we turned the monitors to the crowd, and they kept dancing for about seven minutes. And then the music started again!” The crowd must have thought it was part of the act, right? “Yeah, I think so,” they laugh.

They boys are in the country at the moment, and we’ll be lucky enough to have Cosmic Gate playing several shows in Australia, including in Sydney for a massive New Years Eve gig. “We are really looking forward to that. At Summadayze we play for just one hour, but in Sydney we play four hours. We start at 11 and we are working on a proper countdown. We’ll see what we find!”

It all sounds like a busy for the duo, one with a wife and child, and another with a partner. Do they ever get sick of constantly hitting the nightclubs? “We don’t get sick of partying. The touring is quite hard sometimes and the thing is, often you’re tired before gigs. But always before you enter a club you forget about being tired.”

And that brings us to the all-important question: is trance dead? What say you, Cosmic Gate? For the biys, it’s a matter of constantly changing things up to keep things fresh. “Our last album was very electro influenced. We just do what we feel, and we change again and again. We never try to do music for special boxes. So we have no idea how we are going to sound in ten years, they say.

But the passion remains. “We love our jobs. We don’t want to stop!”

Catch Cosmic Gate at the following shows across the country, and check out the recent mix ITM FM…

31st Dec: Space, Sydney
1st Jan: Summadayze Festival, Melbourne
1st Jan: Metro Afterhour, Melbourne
4th Jan: Earth Nightclub, Adelaide
5th Jan: Summafieldayze Festival, Gold Coast
6th Jan: Summadayze Festival, Perth