Agnelli & Nelson - Shoulder To Shoulder With The Nu-Generation

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 28th February, 2008

If you’re talking about trance, Agnelli & Nelson are a production duo that have been involved with it for a very long time. Hooking up in 1997 and responsible for one of trance’s biggest ever anthems Everyday when the sound hit the bigtime in ‘99, they’re definitely one of the old hands. But that doesn’t mean they can’t stand alongside the new wave of trance stars that have emerged in the past few years: in 2007 they hit big once again with their remix of John O Callghan’s Big Sky, which was a firm fixture on the Ibiza season that turned out to be one of the year’s biggest tracks.

Now they’re back in Australia for a series of club shows, as well as an appearance at the Sydney’s Mardi Gras party. Ahead of their arrival for a gig in Brisbane this Friday, Same Same’s Angus Paterson speaks to the pair about the new wave of players in trance, their place within the current scene as well as that unforgettable gig they played at Gatecrasher in Melbourne back in 2000.

Hi there guys, this is Angus from Same Same in Australia. How’s it going, and have you had a positive start to the year so far?

Hi Angus, yes so far it’s been great. We kicked off 2008 at The Gallery in London on the 4th of January, and so far we’ve played some of the best trance clubs in the UK including The Coach and The Savoy in Ireland, Inside Out in Glasgow and Off the Rails in Sheffield. And our next tune has been tried and tested tune on Judge Jules’ Radio 1 show, and we’ve just had ‘Tune of the Week’ on A State of Trance with our remix of Solarstone’s new single. So yeah, it looks like it’s gonna be a good year.

First things first, you guys must be on a high at the moment. You’ve been involved in trance for over a decade, but in ‘07 you had one of the year’s biggest hits with your mix of John O’ Callaghan’s Big Sky. You’ve always been consistent, but how does it feel to be thrown back into the spotlight in such a massive way?

Well it’s great when people like the tunes we do, but we don’t really think about it. We are just cruising along trying to enjoy ourselves as we go. We get a buzz out of helping people, so we hooked John up with Audrey who we just love so much, she has a quality voice so it’s all good when you work with the right people.

What are you going to be following it up with production-wise in 2008?

We have two new singles ready to go, the first is Just When I Think There’s An Answer with vocals by Phil Wolsey and it’s coming on Deepblue Records. Then we have another coming on Cold Harbour which is called Sleeping In Airports, we have a remix coming for Markus Shulz called Perfect, a quality vocal track, and we also have remixed Solarstone’s new track Rain Star Eternal which is a quality tune as well. Then we have a load of singles due for release for the rest of the year.

Something that’s interesting to me is that you guys have been with trance for pretty much the whole time, from its peak in ‘99 to when it waned a little bit for a few years, and it’s really experienced a resurgence in the last little while. What’s your take on where the global trance scene is currently?

Yeah there a whole new buzz going on at the minute with a whole load of new promoters, producers and clubbers on the scene. We even have a new agent called James, and things are getting exciting. I would say it’s very healthy at the moment which is great to see, it’s certainly in a much better state than it’s been in for the last few years.

The last few years in particular have seen trance go in exciting directions, taking on elements of tech, progressive and electro. Have you identified a lot with this?

Yeah this is something we are into, we play some of these as they go well together with the more straightforward trance and we find it’s a good change to start of our sets with something different. It’s all healthy as far as were are concerned, things need to progress and there’s no point in standing still.

I know that you guys produce under several different aliases. Tell me about some of your different guises, and how they’re different from what you do with Agnelli & Nelson.

Well it’s all down to names, we just wanted to make more stuff and our deal with Xtravaganza didn’t really allow for that so we just did a bit of experimenting with instrumental tracks and different labels, and we use Agnelli & Nelson for vocal stuff mainly.

One of your really big gigs while you’re in Australia will be the Mardi Gras party in Sydney, the year’s most important gay and lesbian event, and it’s the 30th anniversary too. It might be an unusual party for you guys, but musically it seems like quite a good fit. What are you guys expecting from this?

I’m sure it’ll be great, we are expecting lots of hands in the air and I’m sure our music will be perfect. Our track Holding Onto Nothing was the gay anthem at the Mardi Gras two or three years ago, so it’s great to be doing a gig like this especially as it’s the 30th anniversary. We always find the gay crowd totally up for it, and really nice people with great attitudes so it’s a pleasure for us, it’s just great to be asked.

In the promo material you talk about a Gatecrasher gig in Melbourne as being one of your favourite ever shows. Tell us a bit about that?

Well it was back in September 2000 when the Olympics were on and Australia was experiencing a real buzz, everyone was so happy and the gig was at Victoria Docks when Everyday was in the charts in Australia and I was doing a Gatecrasher tour with Tall Paul and John OO Fleming. The whole tour was awesome and it was my first time in Australia, I was just in heaven. I just loved the place and the people so it left a big impression on me, but this gig just topped the lot. I just remember it being awesome and we played both the instrumental and vocal version of Everyday and the reaction just blew me away, the noise was like being at the world cup final.

So what’s featuring in your sets at the moment?

It’s changing all the time as far as tracks go, but the main thing for us is to rock the crowd, they are the ones who matter and if they’re happy then that’s the job done. But we try to make it as uplifting as possible, so expect ‘hands in the air’ with a lot of quality tunes and we always play a classic or two.

Agnelli & Nelson play 4am in the Hordern Pavillion at Mardi Gras this weekend. They also play Family in Brisbane Fri 22 Feb, Palace Theatre, Melbourne Saturday 23 Feb and Sublime at Home, Sydney on Fri 29 Feb.

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