Trance Family Lebanon
After last year’s Dakota album, ‘The Nine Skies’, Markus Schulz announced his artist album ‘We Are The Light’. We previously sat down with Markus in Dubai and talked a bit about his album (you can find that interview here) but during this year’s ADE, we had a more in-depth conversation with the man himself to discover more about his upcoming album.
After the dramatic events occurring around the world like ‘The Pulse’ shootings as well as Las Vegas and more, Markus was struck hard and his previous Dakota album came to life trying to make sense of what was going on. Last year’s album was kind of Markus musically expressing himself since, in his own words, “I don’t know how to express myself other than music. It was me expressing my feelings about everything going on in the world”. But with this album, Markus is striking the world with a boost of positivity.
With this album now, when I made ‘We Are The Light’ with Nikki Flores, when we wrote that, everything became clear to me – I want this album. It came from a dark place, from all those feelings but as an “Enough is enough”.
When you look out to festivals, you see all the people smiling, all the flags from all over the world, all smiling & having fun, enjoying life – this is the example, the light in the world, that Markus wants to project. We are the light the world needs to look out and see what’s beautiful about it.
We can’t look to other people to be our guiding light, we need to be.
The album took 2 years and includes a big list of collaborators with whom Markus maintains a close friendship and mentions that he worked with his ‘friends’ and not artists. We asked him about diversity and how essential it is to have such a broad list of different styles, Markus gives an example of a theatre.
I love drama and telling a story. I love scenes, when the curtain closes and re-opens, that’s a new scene. It’s a new mood. Each song is a different mood and I think of voices as instruments. There are so many different beautiful voices in the world, textures of voices. To use different voices is like using different sounds in your songs.
Markus is known as ‘The Unicorn Slayer’ for his darker and rabbit-hole sound and we were wondering why this particular sound was missing from the album. Is it because the message behind it was sparking a sense of positivity? Well, no!
My fans understand who I am musically. I’m very complex and these albums represent a part of my life. Your first album is a lifetime in the making, so the first album took 20-something years to make because everything from my childhood to my teenage years to growing up with all the emotions are in the first album. Every album after is where you are in your life, so this album right here is a perfect example where I am in my life now. I watch the news and think that enough is enough, I get angry, no more please, it’s enough. That’s kind of where I am now, I’m just like: let us be the difference makers.
To make the world a better place, Markus picked four qualities from the community which can make the world a better place – Positivity, Beauty, Passion & Loyalty.
The Trance fans are the most loyal and passionate fans in the world. Trance music to me is the most beautiful genre of all Electronic Music.
Another two tracks caught our attention. There is a coordinates track on the album, which leads to Eschwege, Germany, Markus’ hometown. Markus wanted to send a personal message through this track to his town, friend and all the people he met along the way, that he didn’t forget his way home. Incredibly touching moment! On the other hand, Transmission anthem track is also part of the album, however, it’s only produced by Markus while in a previous interview he revealed to us that it will be a collaboration with Ferry Corsten. Here’s what Markus replied concerning the track:
It was supposed to be, yea, but to be honest we were unable to get into the studio to make it happen. We’re still trying to reserve some dates and for sure, 100%, we want to do it but unfortunately, we weren’t able to do it on time for transmission, so don’t worry, it’s going to happen!
