Review: Cosmic Gate Start To Feel

Pitch: Their sixth studio album; the next transitional step from the mega-selling ‘Wake Your Mind’ L.P.

History: Germany’s most enduringly successful electronic music duo

Cast: Cosmic Gate (Nic Chagall & Bossi), Emma Hewitt, Orjan Nilsen, Jerome Isma-Ae, Eric Lumiere, KhoMha, Jonathan Mendelsohn, Alexander Popov & Jannika, Cary Brothers + many more

Mission: The artist album… perfected

Critics: “When they invent the amplifier that goes up to 11, you can score ‘Start To Feel’ 11. Until then it still has to be ‘just’ 10!” ?– Album of the Month (MIXMAG)

Runtime: 1hr, 26mins

Released: June 27, 2014 on WYM Records / Armada Music

Tagline: First they woke your Mind… now Start to Feel!

‘Start To Feel’s story couldn’t begin in a finer place than ‘Happyness’. Cooler on tempo, higher on life, its sun-dipped pianos and rhapsodic melodies fuse feel-great atmosphere into the album’s overture.

Through its female vocal troupe, the LP’s vision begins to broaden. Founded on faithfully syncopated 80s electro drum patterns & FX, Jaren cuts it soul-deep with 'Try’, whilst ‘Be Your Sound’ heroine Emma Hewitt returns with the torch-song triumph of ‘Going Home’. Further in, ‘Shine Forever’ and ‘The Sparks After The Sunset’ (co-starring Alexander Popov & Jannika and Sarah Lynn respectively) radiate their spirited uplift.

“What we would like to get across through ‘Start To Feel”, says Nic Chagall “is that electronic music doesn’t need to always start and stop at the drop. It doesn’t have to be all about that 60 seconds. We love that type of music. If we didn’t we wouldn’t have made tracks like ‘So Get Up’ and a dozen others. But those are start points to Cosmic Gate’s music. Not end ones.”

“Our overall aim is the long game”, expands Bossi. “In the studio we want to create tracks with real life expectancy. We want to make ‘years-from-now’ music, where every time you come back to a track, you hear something new, something different, something more than you caught the last time. There are so many more moments and elements with which you can start to feel a track. We want to encourage people to experience electronic music in a deeper, wider, more complete way.”

An all-powerful atmosphere generator, ‘Yai’ dark charts the outer-reaches of progressive instrumentalism... then voyages further still. Likewise building more dissident characteristics into ‘S.T.F.’ is the Jerome Isma-Ae co-production ‘Telefunken’, which pans, echoes and tremors its square-form sonica, finally introducing a Kraftwerk-ian lead-line. Skilfully flipping the frequency dial, Kristina Antuna supplies mainline spark to ‘Alone’ – a track whose supremely catchy lyrics and song will be all over the world’s airwaves come summertime.

Naturally, no Cosmic Gate LP would be complete without a substantial bedrock of arena-razing atomics! Tracks like ‘So Get Up’ and ‘Crushed’ (exclusive to its iTunes release) have already given peak-time a heads-up of what’s incoming. Nic & Bossi reap further thunderous instrumental havoc through the complexly programmed fire & brimstone synthesis of Orjan Nilsen collab ‘Fair Game’ and the aural superstructure of KhoMha co-pro ‘Tormenta’.

‘S.T.F.’s gravities are brought into acuter focus through music like ‘No One Can Touch You Now’ and the album’s title track ‘Start To Feel’. All but erasing the line between deep trance & house, they bring never-previously-heard sounds and styles to Cosmic Gate’s production creed. Respectively, Mike Schmid and ‘WYM’ returnee Cary Brothers supply their vocal expression to tracks whose lyrical narratives play in the mind for days.

Making two appearances over its runtime, LA’s Eric Lumiere brings vocal elevation to “anthem-in-a-can” (DJ Mag) ‘Falling Back’ and a more deeply held pathos to ‘Run Away’. Heralding the album’s coda, early Nic Chagall singer/songwriter discovery Jonathan Mendelsohn brings an expressive, moving vocal magnetism to its iTunes exclusive swansong ‘All My Life’.

Electronic? Music bible MIXMAG says ‘Start To Feel’ is: “stylistically fearless, panoramic, astonishing and by virtue-of, reaches that hallowed height of perfection.” Start to feel it for yourself from June 27.

Tracklist:
01 Happyness
02 Falling Back (with Eric Lumiere)
03 Fair Game (with Ørjan Nilsen)
04 Alone (with Kristina Antuna)
05 No One Can Touch You Now (with Mike Schmid)
06 Telefunken (with Jerome Isma-Ae)
07 Run Away (with Eric Lumiere)
08 Going Home (with Emma Hewitt)
09 Sparks After The Sunset (with Sarah Lynn)
10 Yai
11 So Get Up
12 Try (with Jaren)
13 Start To Feel (with Cary Brothers)
14 Shine Forever (with Alexander Popov & Jannika)
15 Crushed 
?16 Tormenta (with KhoMha)
17 Falling Back (Radio Edit) (with Eric Lumiere)   Bonus Track
18 All My Life (with Jonathan Mendelsohn)    Bonus Track

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