We chatted with the historic german duo, which in a personal way dot the trance music with wonderful tracks from the beginning of the 2000s
On the scene for two decades, Stoneface & Terminal have ridden the various phases of the story of trance music touching all styles and forms, always bringing to trance music an unmistakable style characterized by a high quality and purity of sounds, like their latest Sun & Soul: we asked Henry and Matthias some questions about their career:
Henry & Matthias, your latest single ‘Sun & Soul’ it’s a beautiful uplifting
melody: we are curious to know how it was born.
After we finished our Moon-Trilogy we talked with our fans on Twitch during one of our streams
what we can do next. The idea was to do a Sun-Trilogy. After some weeks we came up with
some musical sketches without thinking about names. But the style and the melodie was so
bright and uplifting we decided to call it Sun & Soul because sun is always good for your soul 🙂
The technical process took us some weeks finding the right sounds, rhythm and arrangement.
In the end we are totally happy that we reached #2 on Beatport and still get so much great
feedback!
During this 2024, other your beautiful tracks were also released, which reflect
one of your predominant characteristics, “switching” from one trance style to
another: do you think you have a particular style in your heart or does each of
them mean something special to you ?
We cannot always do the same style in music. Actually we come from hard Loop-Techno
and added melodies to it. That’s why we always play with harder sounds and rhythms
while, on the other side, we sometimes add some uplifting or melancholic soundscapes to
these techy rhythms. It also depends on our mood. There will always beat two hearts in our
tracks. One is bright and shiny and one is dark and dirty 😉
Among the characteristics of your carrer there are certainly the very numerous
remixes, which most of the time have been more appreciated and voted than the
original versions: could you indicate at least one rework that you are most proud
of ?
That’s pretty hard to say but one of our remixes with the most impact in the scene is
probably the Stoneface & Terminal Remix of Gareth Emery – ‘More Than Anything’. Tiesto
dropped it everywhere to see it on his ‘Elements Of Life’ Blu-Ray was very special for us.
Also our remix of Loverush UK! Ft Bryan Adams – ‘Tonight In Babylon’ was very special for
us as we were working with Bryan’s voice which caused some goosebumps here and
there.
In recent years you have opened your musical path to two new projects:
Gundamea, which showed us a very high quality progressive/deep version of you
and last year, the techno project Terminal (DE): is there an idea to continue with
these two aliases ?
We are constantly working on ideas for Gundamea but it really must hit the nail and we
need to have enough amount of time to produce the tracks while we are working on
Stoneface & Terminal stuff. Terminal (DE) is for the Techno stuff but sometimes we release
the Techno stuff under Stoneface & Terminal. We love to try new things and see if we can
get things off the ground or not. That keeps us fresh.
In your twenty-year career, one partnership stands out most frequently, namely
the collaboration with Rosnki Speed: how did this partnership come about ?
Actually we did the same amount of collabs with Roger Shah too. Ron lives in our neighbour
town and we met due to our work with Euphonic. We threw some cool ideas together and it worked very well.
You often appear together on social media even outside the recording studio: what
are other passions of Henry & Matthias and how would you describe yourselves ?
We are besties since many many years so we hang together as much as we can.
Three studio albums (‘Wide Range’ ‘Be Different’, ‘Altered Floors’) and a best of
released in 2015, ’10 Years’: are there plans to release a new collection or a new
album ?
Not at the moment. It takes a lot of time and money to do an album and it looks like people
don’t buy albums anymore. In these times where most people only listen to 2 minute
shreds the market is not ready for long albums anymore. Maybe it comes back one day.
We keep our fingers crossed.
Speaking of ‘10 Years’: how would you imagine trance music in ten years ?
There will be noises and some sort of binaural frequencies that lead your body into a state of
trance : D We have no clue. Maybe just some mix of different styles.
Can you remind us of an electronic music event, a your DJ set or a location where
you played that you remember with more nostalgia, today ?
There are some good events over the years but we will not forget the very first big one we had
in 2006 as we played for the first time in front of a bigger crowd – 6.000 people at
Creamfields. Also events with the good old names like Mayday, Gods Kitchen or Nature
One. But we rember too on small events like in Tallinn where we played in a club with a
capacity of 50 people and the filled the little on with close to 100 people, that was a gig for
the books because people were so close and they were dancing and screaming like
hundred thousend – unforgettable moments.
Thanking you for your availability, excluding your incredible artistic repertoire,
can you name us a trance classic – or more than one – that you have always
loved ?
LSG – Hearts
Chicane – Saltwater
Van Bellen – Let Me Take You
Humate – Love Stimulation (Club Mix)