Introduction: From their very first single, through to the release of their visionary, 2.0 ‘MOSAIIK’ albums, Grammy nominated duo Cosmic Gate have proved to be a musical union without parallel. A chance, late-90s encounter in a Cologne studio set them on the path to becoming Germany’s most enduringly successful electronic music pairing. Since, each and every single release has hit the million-streams mark, with classics like ‘Exploration Of Space’ being Spotify’d over 40million times. Their diverse remixography meanwhile includes everyone from illustrious Hollywood composers like James Horner (Avatar/Titanic), to in-scene demigods like Armin van Buuren and Tiësto. Nic & Bossi’s behind-decks-chemistry has pushed floors to supernova in a now uncountable number of countries. They’ve reigned over electronic music capitals and spun the veritable A-through-Z of major festivals. In the process they’ve picked up a GRAMMY nomination in 2019’s Best Remix category; became the highest climber on a DJ Mag’s Top 100 chart and racked up a litany of other awards and plaudits.
Driven by their 11 critically renowned albums (most recently ‘MOSAIIK’), singles like ‘Nothing To Hide’, ‘Hear Me Out’ and ‘Your Mind’, and scene-defining classics like ‘am2pm’, ‘Fall Into You’, ‘Fire Wire’ and ‘Exploration of Space’, their star on dance music’s walk of fame has long since been laid.
As DJs, kinetically bouncing off one another’s energy, week in, week out, Cosmic Gate continue to take floors to their highest heights. They’ve smashed the biggest festivals in all four corners, including Tomorrowlands, EDCs, Ultras, Creamfields, Untold, ASOTs, Transmissions and Dreamstates. In North America they’ve brought their inimitable sound to EZoo, IleSoniq, Beyond Wonderland, Veld, Chasing Summer and many more. Roadblocking clubs like Space, Governors Island NY, L.A.’s Palladium, Exchange & Academy venues, Washington’s Echostage, and Great Hall at Brooklyn’s Avant Gardner has become the pair’s S.O.P. Their WMC/MMW Miami Sunset Cruises have long since passed into clubbing legend and the groups famously sold out a 2000 capacity solo show on the island of Honolulu.
Grammy nomination: the final month of 2018 Nic & Bossi were nominated for their first Grammy award. Selected in the Best Remixer category, their work on Gabriel & Dresden and Sub Teal’s ‘Only Road’ (Anjunabeats) drew nomination praise from the academy. The remix was further described by DJ Mag as “masterful”, with “alchemic sequencing”, a “shrewd use of context” and was “wily” in its “sound design.”
Livestreams: in 2020, Cosmic Gate began a series of high-concept livestreams from around the globe. These immediately captured the imagination of a then-in-lockdown public, with each stream delivering millions of views and quadrupling their YouTube subscribership to over 300k. Panoramically backdropped by awe inspiring sunsets, they livestreamed from rooftops, beaches and villas, including locations such as Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Bali, Indonesia and by Es Vedra on Ibiza. By 2023 their New York City high-rise Sunset Set had drawn 15M views, while their Best Of 2020 from Miami had racked up 11M.
In 2021,”to honour their creativity and seminal influence” EDM.com named Cosmic Gate’s Miami Open Skies set as one of the “10 best performances of the year in electronic dance music.” They went on to comment: “shifting gears yet again, their ‘MOSAIIK – Chapter One’ album showcased a darker, more techno-influenced sound and their Miami Open Skies DJ set in March (2021) moonlighted as the opening act to those new sounds.”
C.G. Productions & Albums: In their homeland, Cosmic Gate has maintained a high level of mainstream success, charting no fewer than 7 top 40 singles. Further afield ‘Fire Wire’ signalled the pair’s arrival, becoming a pan-European chart smash and hitting the top ten in a number of countries.
Most recently evidenced by their ground-breaking ‘MOSAIIK’ LPs, albums continue to play a significant part in their production career. At the turn of the decade, the twin releases introduced a new ethic to their music. It was one that (Cosmic Gate observed at the time) was “deeper, more progressive and song-led”, while also being “less symmetric and as intensely floor-focused as our previous material”. This, in turn, reflected the broader range of musical tastes that’d latterly had come to inspire the pair.
‘MOSAIIK’ tracks like ‘Blame’ and ‘Nothing To Hide’ from Chapter One and ‘Hear Me Out’ from its second Chapter rapidly became some of Cosmic Gate biggest streaming hits to date. Opening the group up to a wider still audience, the albums also gave rise to their most extensive tour to date – one that by October of 2023 had encompassed 60+ dates globally and had taken them to 20 + countries.
MOSAIIK was preceded by ‘20 Years’, which was released in August of 2019. Subtitled [‘Forward Ever Backward Never’], it included new Cosmic Gate productions, as well as 2.0 renovations of CG anthems from their first two decades together. Further, it featured reworks of tunes personally inspirational to CG, as well as new takes from other artists on classic Cosmic moments. Its first single releases brought a brace of Beatport hits with the MINT-playlisted ‘Come With Me’ and the “profound” (said DJ Mag) “9/10” scored ‘Need To Be Loved’, both hitting the #1 position.
’20 Years’ itself was heralded by the two ‘Chapters’ of the longplayer ‘Materia’ – the release of which musically bookended the group’s 2017. It was the album mothership for a clutch of new Cosmic Gate singles and releases. Among them were ‘Fall Into You’, ‘Edge Of Life’, the Beatport #1 ‘am2pm’, ‘AR’ with Markus Schulz, ‘Dynamic’ with Ferry Corsten (“melody and grit in equal proportions” said DJ Mag’s 8/10 review) and others.
The period 2015 – 2016 saw Cosmic Gate continue to embrace the collaboration medium through a number of high-profiles co-production projects. Among them was ‘Embargo’, which was the result of studio time shared with Armin van Buuren. The track was subsequently featured on the latter’s 2015 album, ‘Embrace’. A year later Nic & Bossi teamed up with Ferry Corsten to record ‘Event Horizon’. Garnering substantial praise from fans, DJs and press alike, it topped Beatport’s Trance chart in October of 2016.
Released in the summer of 2014, Cosmic Gate used their sixth album ‘Start To Feel’ to inspire fans to experience electronic music in a “broader and more complete way”. It’s first single – the Eric Lumiere-sung ‘Falling Back’ – was described as “9.5/10” scoring “anthem in a can” by the UK’s DJ Mag. Further singles including ‘So Get Up’, ‘Yai (Here We Go Again’) and ‘Fair Game’ cemented its reputation.
In 2011 the duo released ‘Wake Your Mind’. It produced ‘Be Your Sound’ – a single that MIXMAG suggested: “finally unseats ‘Fire Wire’ as Cosmic Gate’s best-known-for track”. With its official video sitting at 18 million views on YouTube, it bagged an IDMA nomination in 2012, (with the JES-sung ‘Flying Blind’ following suit a year later).
Cosmic Gate’s album movements began with ‘Rythm & Drums’ (in 2001), ‘No More Sleep’ which followed a year later and ‘Earth Mover’ in ‘06. The latter was the album platform for the club hits ‘Analog Feel’, ‘Should Have Known’ and the IDMA-nominated ‘I Feel Wonderful’. ‘Sign of the Times’ arrived 3 years later, bringing the vocal anthem ‘Body of Conflict’, a further IDMA-nod for ‘Not Enough Time’ and catalysed (a then unheard of) 43-place leap up DJ Mag’s Top 100 chart. It also edged the pair towards a more open-plan electronic music style (later to fully manifest in ‘Wake Your Mind’ and ‘Start To Feel’).
Cosmic Gate’s Wake Your Mind marque was subsequently spun off into a number of other areas. WYM Radio is a comprehensively formatted show, which features Nic & Bossi discussing and airing their most highly rated tracks of the week. It’ll also encompasses first-listen music premieres and tunes from the deeper side of the CG psyche. The show – which is broadcast on DI.FM and many other stations – also features comprehensive info on up-and-coming gigs, Nic & Bossi’s Big Bang track of the week and a host of other features, latterly including the ThrowBack weekly classic and their Private Playlist tune. In November of 2023, the show passed its landmark 500th episode.
Since 2013, Wake Your Mind Records has been the label base for all of Cosmic Gate’s releases. It’s also served as a dais for Cosmic Gate to sign and release music from other artists. Of late, tracks from producers like Maor Levi Greenhaven DJs and Steve Brian, as well as Nic Chagall’s own solo material have featured, alongside co-productions with Ferry Corsten, Markus Schulz, Super8 & Tab and others. Latterly, the Wake Your Mind Sessions compilations have also come to play a part in the WYM make-up, with the fourth in the series reaching release in May of 2020.
Other remixes: Over their production lifetime, Cosmic Gate’s remixes have become almost as illustrious as their productions. In essence a blow-by-blow of A-list artists, Nic & Bossi have lent their studio know-how to releases by Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, Deadmau5, Paul van Dyk, Above & Beyond’s OceanLab project, Markus Schulz, John O’Callaghan, Gareth Emery and Ferry Corsten. In early 2010 Atlantic Records US approached them to remix James Horner’s ‘I See You’ – the main theme from the film Avatar. This run culminated in Nic & Bossi being nominated for Best Remixer at the 2010 IDMAs.