Page 25 - DemoZone Magazine Issue 003

Above & Beyond @ Live Music Hall, Cologne (15th January 2015)
Above & Beyond need no further introduction. Well known for their label Anjunabeats and remixes for acts like Madonna, Delerium and Ayumi Hamasaki, this group from London are one of the leading dance acts of the world. To celebrate the release of their fitfth studio album called 'We Are All We Need', they organised a huge world tour (with 12 gigs in Europe) which started in Cologne on 15th January. About 1,500 trance and progressive fans came together in the Live Music Hall in Cologne to celebrate this happening. The warm up DJ set was played by Anjunadeep act Lane 8 who started with a deep and minimal sound which developed to more pumping and progressive beats at the end of his set. 21.30 p.m. Above & Beyond entered the stage and two hours of full emotion began. New material from their album was performed in club-conform mixes and also some of their well known and established tracks and classics like 'On A Good Day' were played. After more than two hours of driving beats and emotional melodies all the people went home happy and with a smile on their faces...
W&W @ Bootshaus, Cologne (06th February 2015)
W&W (Willem van Hanegem and Wardt van der Harst), the famous EDM and progessive trance duo from the Netherlands came to Bootshaus in Cologne on 6th February. The event was organized by 'Deepblue', a promotor from Dortmund who already
organised events with acts like Danny Avila, Avicii, Nicky Romero, Tocadisco, Laserkraft 3D and Laidback Luke.
At the event we had the opportunity to have a short interview with Willem and Wardt:
Can you shortly describe where you first met each other and desided to make music together as W&W?
We had one mutual friend and I was making music with him and so we got in contact. The first time we met was at Trance Energy back in the days in 2007. After that it took about two or three month until we made our first track together. We both still made music solo but we thought that the stuff me made together was better that the stuff we made solo. So we decided to focus on that instead of our solo projects. Our first track from 2007 was called 'Mustang'
How would you describe your current sound compared to the sound when W&W was started?
A lot of people think we changed a lot in our sound but we actually disagree on that. The core is the same, the most important things for us is the energy and also the big room feeling. 'Mustang' had a big room feeling, and 'Thunder' or 'Lift Off' have the same kind of emotion. It´s only a different way of working it out like the rest of the track. BPM s change, it gets slower, sounds change of course, the way a production is done changes, they get louder by other compression techniques. But for us the core of our tracks is still the same. It´s always about catchy melodies. The tracks must
work on the dancefloors.
How would you describe your studio work together with other artists like Armin van Buuren or Hardwell? Do you meet them personally in the studio or is it just a filesharing via the internet?
It depends. With Armin we got together in the studio and combined all ideas in a project file and afterwards we worked it out on Skype. And it was almost the same with Hardwell. We made our first collaboration with Hardwell, a track called 'Jumper' together in Australia.
What can we expect from W&W in 2015: new releases, remixes and DJ gigs? Any other things we should be aware of?
We have almost finished about 15 or 16 new productions and are trying to find out what of these tracks to release first. There will be, almost every month in 2015 a new track released, most of them on our own label Mainstage Music. Also coming up is a collaboration with Dimitry Vegas & Like Mike, also one with Blasterjaxx and a lot of other collaborations we cannot reveal the names of. We are currently also working
on a new trance production. It´s more back to the roots in some parts of the song. It sounds like a combination of 'Invasion', 'D# fat' and 'Shocker'. It has this really trancy big room feeling in the breakdown
and we hope you like the result. www.deepblue.me
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Words by Frank and Andreas Dueffel Pics by Dominik Fehr
ESSENTIALDANCEMUSIC 25
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