Ever since I started to make music as a child, I was particularly excited by atmospheric sound, strong melodies and repetitive structures. I discovered the piano at the age of four and making music became my way of interpreting thoughts about life. Playing and composing music became my most profound opportunity to build up an identity. Around the age of twelve I stumbled upon new German music like Cluster, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and this discovery hit me like a thunderbolt. I had never heard such music and yet it felt as if it had always been in me. The next significant inspiration came from the works of Giorgio Moroder and particularly Donna Summer’s ‘’I Feel Love’’. Other main influences came from different New York-scenes such as minimal music, new wave and advanced electro, as well as the works and sound philosophy of Brian Eno and Wim Mertens.
In result, these major influences – surrounded by my huge classical background, from Bach over Mozart and Beethoven to Debussy and Stockhausen – enhanced my excitement for synthesizers and my attitude to create a personal musical signature. I wanted to create music as a transformed synthesis of mental and physical energy, music for body and spirit at the same time, based on electronic instruments. This definition is quite close related to the term trance, isn’t it? As synthesizers were incredibly expensive at the end of the seventies, I had to create my handmade electronic sounds out of alternative sources. I used my (prepared) piano, sounds from the radio, lots of percussion instruments and two tape recorders for ping-pong recording. Later on, I would add a Fender Rhodes E-piano – my first (semi-)electronic instrument – and a Roland TR 606 drum machine, before the digital synthesizer was introduced during the mid-eighties. Neither I actually liked the sound of digital synthesizers, nor could I afford these new top modern instruments. But had an advantage: prices of analogue instruments decreased dramatically, so I could buy some of them now! It was finally possible to get my hands on all these beloved instruments and felt like being in paradise.
I was part of various school-bands at grammar school, in which we tried to emulate personal avant-garde and advanced new wave heroes like DAF, Der Plan, Cabaret Voltaire and Tuxedomoon. In 1986 I started studying composition at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin (West). My personal idea of contemporary (classical) music did not match with the ones my professors were expecting from me. There was no alternative classic scene at all, so it was fortunate that I came in touch with this very small group of people who were involved in the – almost unknown – acid, house and techno scene. And exactly those 150 people made the first Love Parade happen in 1989. I met new friends, new colleagues, I became part of a family and belonged to a movement. Around that time I also started to make music with Kid Paul and DJ Jonzon.
Trance, as I would define it, is a state of consciousness which I experienced already as a child: a condition where the perception of reality stands in a sphere of self-forgetfulness, the out-of-world be, where time is lifted and where I feel myself geared really in the world at the same time. It is a State of personal happiness, vitality, and of one-ness with the big picture.
It`s happening while playing, reading, when being together with animals or people I feel attracted to…
The easiest way I could make this state happen was in making music. So, I wanted to be a composer to deal intensively with the idea and to share the results with an audience in a following step. I noticed that the audience reacted to it in an impressive manner. I sensed an extremely positive feedback loop between me as running artist and the audience. I realized in the course of time due to the varied experiences as a live performer, that in it`s most overvaluing moments everything can play together and starts to resonate in an almost transcendental way (the space, the sound, the instruments, the location, the air, the climate, the mood etc.)
When making music, I’m the fastest in the experience of oneness, both in absolute seclusion at home, and even so as the eye of a cyclone in a concert situation.My personal vision of Trance music style contained: the moments of elegance, lightness, melancholy and sensuality – alltogether under one groove. Together with my recording-engineer Jens Woynar and the Tonmeister Wolfgang Ragwitz I put a great deal of attention in the production in order to work on a very personal signature of my compositions and how they should sound like: Sophistication & timelessness are keywords here. In the selection of ingredients I always wanted look across over the immediate (and expected) techno plate edge and thus have the courage to be able to make it not any law.
I tried to avoid the „trap“ by attentive crosschecking my work: Being as simple as possible but not banal. Creating elegant sensuality and showing emotions, but not being too pathetic and sentimental. Being harmonic but not too pleasing and commercial.
Being part of a movement but not at any costs. Both Knowing my talents and opportunities as well as keeping up a sceptic position about the relation between myself and the „environment“ of a more and more increasing “techno-business”, “techno-industry” and “techno-entertainment-scene”.
Between 1992 and my retreat in 1999 I was part of the Super League of global top-live-acts with Prodigy, Underworld, Moby, Orbital.
Consequently I could have seen me just as one of these “winners” according to the ruling “the winner takes it all”- market-system.
Every person must clear to its essential principles, what he defines as „successful life“. I early doubted that my understanding of „succesfull living“ was consistent with the values and expectations of a capitalist social system.
Here is a (mini-)short list of main inspirations:
My debut album ‘’Stellar Supreme’’ defined my role as a style-embossing artist on the international map of techno-trance music. In order to make the next step with a record company that had the power to give my music even more logistic support, I left my home label MFS in 1993. Since I was advanced to one of the electronic artists with the possible potential and aura to become an international ‘popstar’, the entire industry was keen to work with me – from established techno labels like R&S Records to global giants like Sony, WEA, BMG and Polygram. I presume that my exceptional position as a leading live-performer with virtuoso skills on keyboards and synthesizers made a unique impression.
Interestingly, many people still see me as the role-model for all these stadium-sized super live acts we all know since the end of the last century. I had free choice without having to make any compromises regarding my essential demands, which were absolute freedom and control about the material to be released and no long-term commitment to the label. In the end I chose to work with Logic Records – which had been build by the people behind Münzing/Anzilotti of Snap! – because they seemed to offer the best combination of having an independent status while providing me international opportunities. Besides their main office in Frankfurt, they were on their way to establish dependances in London and New York. And I liked the two persons in charge, Matthias Martinsohn and Konrad von Löhneysen.
With the follow-up album ‘’Thinking About Myself’’ I wanted to expand the content spectrum of what techno- trance could consist of. Together with my recording engineer Jens Wojnar and my Tonmeister Wolfgang Ragwitz, we were enthusiastically involved in developing the Cosmic Baby sound as a distinctive language. Most of the pieces on the album were already composed when I went back to the studio for two months. The abstract topic of ‘’Fantasia’’ dealt in my mind for a long time already. I think I made at least twenty fragments which circled around this idea. They all sounded different and targeted not more than partial aspects of what I wanted to express in a convincing matter. So all of them were thrown away, but all these reverberated at the subconscious level and were therefore part of a necessary process. The ‘’Fantasia’’ like we all know it was created in just one night – out of the blue, so to say. We should always keep in mind, that what we call ‘random’ is much more connected to inner preparation, and resonating conditions, than most of us take for real. Being creative has, in my experience, less to do with mood and moment. It is rather an evolutional process, it has to do with the readiness of being patient and and the readiness of long-time-working on a challenging idea. The album title had been a leitmotiv, as I started to reflect how things work. ‘’Fantasia’’ has been an answer to one of these questions.
I met Paul Schmitz-Moormann in 1989. A close friendship developed centred around non-stop music-making. From Paul I learned how to combine my high-quality melodic material with rhythm sections in a way that was both transparent and effective and gave the compositions a clear structure. In return, I was a kind of contemporary “piano/music professor” for Paul. In 1990 we spent some time together on Ibiza. We got some really good vibes in a white villa on the beach where we spent the evenings: the “Cafe del Mar”.
In November 1992 Paul returns after an especially long summer holiday on Ibiza. At “Cafe del Mar” he had heard a solo piano composition that had made a big impression on him. I know the piece, it is from Wim Mertens, one of my favourite composers. In the coming weeks we dedicate ourselves as though inspired by a greater force to our own version of this masterpiece working minutely on every little detail until it feels right. In January we produce the two originals (“Kid Paul Mix” and “Cosmic Baby’s Impression”) in the studio in cooperation with Jens Woynar as engineer.
We put it out in 1993 and it became perhaps the most iconic clubbing anthem of all time. I relate so many beautiful moments with it, so it`s „simply there“without the need for revisiting it in a tangible way. On the other hand it`s really outstanding that the piece is to be heard in the clubs every year in a new interpretation. It`s seen almost a kind of ticket to the “Remix-Olympus”, at least a big honouring for a DJ/producer getting permission to put his hands on „Cafe del Mar“. And there arised some outstanding versions over the years… The original will always remain, because it is the original… and there will be always the motivation and inspiration for new people to create a new approach … how wonderful!!!
From an outside perspektive, „Cafe del Mar“ can be possibly seen as the high point of my work as electronic musician so far. And never forget: it was a teamwork with my friend and colleague Paul Schmitz- Moormann, which makes it even more pleasant.
Please understand that I don`t want to waste any thought & time about Paul van Dyk. Sorry about that
Are there any other notable musical adventures that you’d like to cover?
In retrospect, the period from 1993 untill 1995 had been the personal peak of my career as Cosmic Baby and perhaps the most impressive years of techno in general. The music offered the whole spectrum of styles. Almost every day, a new and interesting musical approach made it’s way to our ears. The structures and networks developed worldwide, became mature and professional without being controlled yet by the mainstream industry. Techno seemed to offer an alternative lifestyle, an option to live beyond common categories. Being an active part of it was a true gift. I travelled the whole world by giving concerts with overwhelming feedback and took my time to stay at great places on different continents to which I felt particularly attracted. So many unique impressions with people, intensive and true, combined with a huge amount of creativity, conviction, enthusiasm, intensity, success, confirmation and joy. In these times, I could not ask for more. Some of my pieces became style-setting icons of a whole genre and sound-generation. It makes me very happy that the quintessence of the various facets of my musical expression at the time had been, and still are, appreciated by a great number of people. All this still lives in my great inner treasure chest.
Long time I felt like a „Cosmic Baby“ authentic. But this evolved more and more to the compulsive image, to the role, to the brand: I experienced that it became harder and harder to stay centered as a person because of all these distractions, expectations and requirements from outside. When these assessments of my reality increasingly came up they were accompanied by many fears of loss like:
„What is my real self? – Is there one?“, “ Am I only the sum on conditioned images and projections?“ or “What happens when people see me no more than their hero?”.
On the other hand in the course of time, the scene greatly changed in my view and seemed to have only little to nothing more to do what initially inspired me: the global playground of ideas and alternative life-styles morphed into an entertainment marketplace with all its consequences.
From an artistic point of view I had to realize that the best examples of (Trance-)Music became templates for bottomless uninspiered cheapness. It hailed copies of copies of copies, which in their increasing irrelevancy only burned earth left. This is, analytically considered, nothing new: in the mass production at some point the entire genre becomes questionable and unpalatable, because the flood of bad examples flushes away the minority of outstanding works.
It took me some years to deal with these issues. But it remains in the end: beauty, the devotion, the special, the significant, the true positive energy. It doesn’t die, it remains, if the mass, the striking out, the loud, the garishly, the vulgar is already been disposed by the garbage heap of history.
The presence is always built on the past. As such, the new will consequently turn into the old after some time. I was lucky enough to be in the right place (Berlin) at the right time (1988), equipped with my personal mind space, skills and open attitude towards the unexpected. This matched perfectly into something that was not yet defined. I was lucky and retrospectively very grateful for the opportunity to become part of this movement, that gave us entire freedom to create what we wanted to create. The result of this phenomenon, that took place all over the world and around the same time, was an explosion of groundbreaking new sounds, styles and forms of living together; from Chicago to Amsterdam, from Detroit to London, from Berlin to Melbourne, Moskow and Mexico City. It was mutual positive feedback, an exchange, global teamwork. Nothing had to be predefined. No rules what to do and how to do it. All in all, this time between 1989 and 1999 brought up some great musical innovations (and, naturally, tons of mediocre and cheap mass production…). But the best examples will live forever, because their potential will always be inspiration for future generations.
In 1999, it was time for me to make a retreat from the techno-scene and consequently distinguish between breadth and depth. There was no reason for me to end up like other so called trance-superstars. I am too much of an artist and maverick then a businessman or someone whose ego depends on the quantity of success. I had to let go of Cosmic Baby in order to have space and time for new musical and –most of all- personal directions. My ambitions and affections tended to contemporary classical ways of composing, not to personalised football-stadion-shows including the appropriate musical confection. In the last years I concentrated on music for solo piano; very pure, minimalistic, repetitive and rhythmically complex. I took my time. I recently started to appear back on stage, giving solo piano concerts. Like before, I am interested in the whole spectrum of music and listen to many, many different kinds. Contemporary highlights are works from neo-classical artists like Max Richter, Alva Noto and Craig Anderson. Timeless role-models remain personalities like Hans Joachim Roedelius, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Laurie Anderson.
Generally speaking: music is a part of our consciousness. We connect our lives with the music. Deliberately, by seeking out and finding special music with which we can be in accordance with our „State of mind“. But music also unconsciously inspires us to things, motivations and moods.
Music works in the private sector as well as as ecstatic joint mass experience where the individual consciousness is virtually off and can become a one-be-with-all other.
Music is a distinguishing feature, an anchor of the identification with specific ideas, attitudes, social & ethical questions.
Music is: