Andre Tanneberger might be best known for his earliest hits "9pm (Til I Come)" and "Don't Stop" yet on his newest CD set, Trilogy – he splits his tracks between dance and ambient. Trilogy is the completion of his triumvirate of trance albums (with Addicted to Music and No Silence being the first two parts). Showcasing live instruments and a multitude of vocalists, the music has a mature feel that could attract a whole new audience to his style of trance music. Constantly touring the world, ATB uses his DJ sets to bring his unique style of trance music to the people.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Trilogy is two discs with one more dance-oriented and the
other being chill out. What inspired you to do this kind of format
again?
ATB: Two Worlds was like this also – named because it's flexible
with the two worlds I have. On one side is my touring life with DJing
and playing out to crowds and on the other side is the music I love to
hear when I am in private and calm down a little bit. I really love
to produce ambient music and I did the double CD because you can't do
these two styles on just one CD, it doesn't make sense.
RS: You're known for making trance music but it seems like your
sound is going more instrument and live music driven. Is there a
reason why you're going in that direction?
ATB: No, not really. You can expect anything from me, so maybe next
time it will be less instrumental. This was what I was interested in
right now – doing some crossover things with real instruments, because
it makes the music a little more humanized. Maybe the next album will
be more electronic because I love to change my style always. The
album reflects what I really like now, but the future can change.
RS: There's a lot of guest vocalists on this CD. How do you
choose the singers that you work with?
ATB: First of all, the most important thing for me is that I never
do castings or things like that because I'm not too much interested in
the person, they don't have to dance or look a certain way - I just
need a really unique and outstanding voice. I like voices that are
really strong and unique. For example, when you listen to the voice
of Heather Nova, you instantly know this is Heather Nova, she has her
own voice. It's also the same with the other vocalists on the album,
so every of them had really nice own thing in the voice, and this is
what I'm looking for when I'm searching for voices. I don't care if
it's a big name or things like this, I just care about the voice. For
me, personally, the voice has to have something special.
RS: When you're working with singers do they write the songs to
your tracks or do you go to them with songs already written?
ATB: It depends, sometimes it's the one way and sometimes we do it
the other way. Mostly I write some music and send it to them because
I know in the process of writing lyrics, the vocalists want to be
alone so that they can add their own ideas. They get the ideas and
send something back, and I say 'OK, this is good but I don't like this
too much,' and so we both work on it from there. Sometimes, I also
recognize a nice song from one of my singers and I say 'OK, just let's
take these vocals and let's build nice music around them.' So there's
many ways it can happen.
RS: I noticed that you worked with Heather Nova again.
ATB: The reason for that was that I worked with her a couple of
albums before and I always really loved her voice but I recognized on
the last album that I didn't think that the older songs with her were
strong enough for her voice. That was the reason why I wanted to work
with her again, because I wanted to give her voice the best platform
it could have. I was really happy when I called her that she said
'OK, let's do it again.' I've worked on three songs with her on the
album and it's great – the first single from the album, with her, is
"Renegade."
RS: The first two tracks on the CD – "Justify Death' and
"Religion" have really heavy beats in them – why such a change in
direction?
ATB: I don't want to have any directions as I try to work in
different ways. The first two songs are really bumpy, but I don't
think about using a beat like this or a beat like that. This is
actually the way I do, I just do the music and in the end everybody
should have its own decision on each song...
