Kyau & Albert, a veteran German trance duo known for using euphoric melo- dies and powerful inspirational messages from the vocals of Steven Albert, played at Ottawa’s first after hours trance event at Bijou Nightclub in Febru- ary as part of their Nights Awake tour, supporting their latest studio album. At the time of editing, the album sits in the number two spot in the Top 100 chart for trance releases on Beatport. We sat down with the duo before their set to talk about the album, their tour, and the state of the North American trance scene.
How’s the tour going for you guys right now?
Albert: Really good, we played yesterday in Washington DC, tonight we’re in Ottawa and tomorrow we are going to Seattle. We are very busy but it’s quite fun. Kyau: Last week we were in Canada too, we played 3 shows that went really well: one in Edmonton, then one in Calgary and one in Windsor, we love the clubs and the fans here.
Electronic music is blowing up in North America, and trance especially. How is the fan base growing, and what are your thoughts on this new fan base?
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Albert: I really feel that this music is exploding in North America, it was al- ready big in Europe in the end of the 90’s but now it has come back to America with a new sound, and this new sound is working so well with the North American clubs and the fanbase, all the people here are going crazy about electronic music, so it’s really good!
Trance is a unique type of sound compared to most electronic music, from the people to the messages. Do you like the direction that the evolution of trance music is taking? Being veterans of the industry, what are your thoughts?
Kyau: I think everywhere in music, not only dance music, there is progression all the time. It’s always changing, trends come and go. Basically all the music genres exist throughout time, but the size of the scene just depends on tim- ing, and we have been doing the Kyau & Albert project for quite a long time. As Steven said earlier about electronic music in North America, it was here but not as big as it is right now, and of course trance is a big part of this, the progression is just the natural growth of music. It is much more interesting when it evolves and grows.
Albert: We are very open to the progression and what is new, if we hear some- thing new that we like, we want to include it in our sound.