Gabriel & Dresden
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Gabriel & Dresden performing at Coachella Festival on April 30, 2006
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| Background information | |
| Origin | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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| Years active | 2001–2008, 2011–present |
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| Members | Josh Gabriel Dave Dresden |
Gabriel & Dresden is an American electronic music duo comprising Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden, formed in San Francisco, California. They collaborated from 2001 to 2008, then again from 2011 to the present. During that time, they have created numerous hit songs and remixes, some of which are considered classics.[1] They won the coveted Winter Music Conference IDMA award for "Best American DJ" twice, in 2007 and 2008, the latter time on the same day that the group split up. The pair reunited in early 2011 and proceeded on a reunion tour, which began at Ruby Skye in San Francisco on March 4, 2011.[2] They produced three studio albums together: self-titled album (2006), The Only Road (2017) which was released after an 11-year hiatus period,[3] and Remedy (2020).
Dave Dresden's musical ability was developed through 15 years DJing prior to forming the group, while Josh Gabriel has an undergraduate college degree in music composition from the California Institute for the Arts.
Dave's love for music was influenced by a local 1980's Westchester County, New York nightclub located in Banksville, New York called Krypton's. DJ Ralphie Gomez, the club's longtime resident DJ (1980–1994), played an eclectic mixture of new wave and early industrial music that drew crowds to this popular back road rural night spot. He also was inspired by watching a pre-fame Moby DJ at a teen club in Greenwich, Connecticut, called The Cafe. One night while dancing at Krypton's to Anne Clark's "Wallies", Dave decided to be a DJ.
Dave's first gig was at Marty & Lenny's, a nightclub in New Rochelle, NY where the owners of the then predominantly freestyle music venue promoted a new music night. The night was promoted by Long Island's 92.7 WDRE, and Dave's eponymous DJ name "Dave the Wave" started to earn him recognition amongst fans of new wave, alternative and industrial dance music. From there, he landed a long-standing residency at BAR in New Haven, CT which lasted for over ten years. This helped him to land a spot reporting his top tracks to the Hot Dance Club Songs chart in Billboard, a highly touted, and difficult title to earn amongst DJs in the US with only 95 DJs in total submitting their weekly charts. Dave also worked in many other facets of the music industry including radio, A&R, journalism and club promotions.[4]
Josh started experimenting with synthesizers and computers in the early 1980s, achieving mastery of the Yamaha DX7 and TX816 by the age of 17. With an Apple Macintosh Plus, and the earliest of music applications like Mark of the Unicorn's "Composer" and "Performer", Josh was already on the bleeding edge. In the Netherlands, Gabriel's inventor spirit took shape as he wrote a computer application to control samples on an Akai S900 in real-time with a joystick. With this, the inception for what later became Mixman was born. Along with electronics whiz Jan Panis, (Karlheinz Stockhausen's tech-man)[5] Gabriel built an apparatus which converted beams of light coming up off the floor into a MIDI control device and the 20-year-old Gabriel dressed in black, wearing white gloves performed his real-time beat-trigger device in the clubs of Amsterdam.[6] Josh attended the Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands and earned his degree from California Institute of the ArtsinLos Angeles. He founded the music creation tool Mixman in the 1990s, which was the first program to make music using loops of digital audio. Gabriel's patents for loop-based music remixing are the backbone of industry standard music making software applications used in virtually every producer's studio today.[7]
Dave met Pete Tong whilst he was the music director of Swedish Egil's grooveradio.com in 2000. By 2001 Dave was working for Pete as a scout looking for new music for his radio show Essential Selection and label FFRR. At the Miami Winter Music Conference in March 2001 Dave struck up a conversation with Josh at a party being hosted by grooveradio.com after seeing Josh hand DJ Leon Alexander a copy of his first vinyl record called "Wave 3".[8] Dave liked the track so much gave it to Pete who immediately played it the next week on the Essential Selection and also used it for his compilation Twisted Beats. A few months later, as a thank you for the work he had done, Pete offered Dave the opportunity to do a remix of New Order's Someone Like You and Dave asked Josh to work on it with him.[9]
Dave and Josh officially joined forces later in 2001 and quickly made a name for themselves by creating numerous remixes for artists as diverse as Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Sarah McLachlan, Way Out West, Annie Lennox, Duncan Sheik, and Jewel. In 2002 Gabriel & Dresden released "Lament" on Satoshi Tomiie's Saw Recordings imprint, their first single. The first Gabriel & Dresden gig was Arc in New York City.[10]
In 2004 they released their first mix CD, Bloom, after having their seventh #1 Billboard Dance Chart Hit with the Madonna & Britney Spears collaboration "Me Against the Music". They worked on their own group Motorcycle with JES, resulting in their signature song "As the Rush Comes", which reached #11 on the UK singles charts.[11] Their remix of Josh's side project Andain's "Beautiful Things" also became a club and radio anthem around the world. They entered the prestigious DJ Magazine Top 100 DJ's poll in 2003 at #43. They steadily climbed the Top 100 chart in the following years, placing at 40 in 2004, 33 in 2005, and peaking at 20 in 2006. Also in 2005, they released "Without You Near" in cooperation with Markus Schulz and Departure as well as "Zocalo" with Armin Van Buuren, which was featured on his album Shivers.
Their remix for Above & Beyond's "No One on Earth" was voted the #1 track of the year for 2004 on Armin Van Buuren's A State of Trance radio show.[12]
"We make music with lyrics and choruses, music that is emotive with melodies and meaning."
Josh Gabriel.[13]
"We make songs that make you feel good about feeling bad."
Dave Dresden.[14]
In 2005 Gabriel & Dresden started their own label, Organized Nature, which was intended mainly to release their own material. Their first release on the label was the song "Arcadia" which gained immediate favor with DJs such as Tiësto and Armin Van Buuren. Josh and Dave spent most of 2005 in the studio recording their eponymous debut album, Gabriel & Dresden, featuring vocals from Molly Bancroft and Jan Burton. The album was released in June 2006 and had two hits, "Tracking Treasure Down" and "Dangerous Power", which both topped the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs charts. "Dangerous Power" also won an WMC IDMA Award for "Best Alternative / Dance Single" in 2007.
In 2007 they released the highly regarded Toolroom Knights compilation on Mark Knight's label Toolroom Records, which featured their exclusive remix of The Killers' "Read My Mind".[15]
The duo finished their last tour with two appearances at the Winter Music Conference 2008 in Miami. They played a 5+ hour set at the Pawn Shop on March 28, 2008, and a closing 1 hour set at the Beatport/Remix Hotel Pool Party at the National Hotel on March 30, 2008.
Yes, the rumor is true. Gabriel & Dresden have parted ways for the time being. Over the past year, Josh and I have been moving apart as artists and we decided rather than milk it and be moderately happy together that we separate and examine ourselves as individual artists for a while. Our final date was the beatport pool party in Miami on March 30. For those who were there, I want to thank each and every one of you for showing Josh and I the love and support that you did. A lot of the set was songs that we have individually been working on interspersed with a few fan favorites. I will remember that hour and fifteen minutes forever because I certainly felt the love with all the hands in the air and the well-wishes. [16]
In December 2008, Dresden teamed up with longtime friend and Mephisto Odyssey founder Mikael Johnston to remix Lily Allen's "The Fear" under the new moniker Dresden and Johnston.[17] The new production duo went on to remix a number of artists including Nadia Ali's "Love Story" and Enrique Iglesias's "Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You)", all of which hit the #1 position in the Billboard Hot Club Play Dance Chart. Dresden and Johnston's first original single, "Keep Faith" featuring Mezo Riccio, followed in early 2010 and went to #10 in the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart and top 5 on Sirius radio's BPM and Club Phusion.[18] The single featured remixes by fellow producers Morgan Page and Harry Romero. A full-length album by the duo featuring guest vocalists Nadia Ali, Jan Burton and Skylar Grey was planned but has yet to be released.
Josh spent his time off from Gabriel & Dresden starting a label called Different Pieces (via Armada Music) and working on three different album projects. The first was his 2008 solo album Eight.[19] He also worked on an album project for Winter Kills, Josh's band project with vocalist Meredith Call. This yielded the song "Deep Down" which charted on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart [20] and was on Armin Van Buuren's A State of Trance 2009 year-end compilation. He also produced the debut album for Andain, You Once Told Me which finally saw a release in 2012 and spawned a sizable hit with the song "Promises", which Gabriel & Dresden remixed in 2011.
On December 31, 2010, Gabriel & Dresden reunited for special one off New Year's Eve celebration alongside ATB and Francis Preve at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.[21]
Shortly afterward, the duo were booked on the Anjunabeats WMC Miami party at the Ice Palace as a special guest. Since this event, Gabriel & Dresden have officially announced themselves as reunited.
Since the reunion, Gabriel & Dresden have performed at many clubs and festivals around the world including Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas, Dallas, Chicago & Orlando), Tomorrowland in Belgium, Electric Zoo Festival in New York, Sunburn Festival in India, Escape From Wonderland, Nocturnal Wonderland, Paradiso Festival, Creamfields Australia, ASOT 550: Invasion, Ministry of Sound, London, Zouk and a monthly residency at the Marquee Las Vegas in Las Vegas.[22]
In 2011, they signed an artist deal with Armada Music which brought forth their mix compilation Mixed for Feet, Volume 1 as well as numerous singles including 2012'a "Play It Back" featuring Betsie Larkin, "Tomorrow Comes" with Neil Ormandy (2013), "Shatter" (with D-Wayne) and a re-working of "Tracking Treasure Down Revisited".[23]
On February 3, 2014, they restarted their monthly radio show "Gabriel & Dresden present Organized Nature" on Digitally Imported's progressive channel. Since this show was already on the air in the past, it began this time around with Episode 30.[24]
On March 29, 2014, they released "Rise Up" which was supported by a wide variety of DJs including Above & Beyond,[25] Eric Prydz, Armin Van Buuren,[26] Markus Schulz[27] and Jason Bentley.[28] The official music video for this song was generated entirely from Creative Commons License content found on the video sharing website Vimeo.[29]
On November 21, 2016, the duo launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new album.[30] The project was almost completely funded within the first day, receiving over $25,000 out of the $30,000 they requested. They went on to crowd fund $73,000 to record their album through this Kickstarter
On September 16, 2017, it was announced on Above & Beyond's ABGT 250 show live from The Gorge, that Gabriel & Dresden had signed the new album The Only Road to their label Anjunabeats. Above & Beyond also played two songs from the album, "This Love Kills Me" and "White Walls" in their set. "This Love Kills Me" was subsequently released on Oct 6th, 2017 on Anjunabeats.[31] "Waiting for Winter" and "White Walls" were released on November 7, 2017, as part of the Waiting for Winter / White Walls EP.[32] The album was released on December 15, 2017.[33]
On October 4, 2018, Gabriel & Dresden announced another Kickstarter campaign to create their third album "Remedy." This time they are asking for 100,000US so they can take 6 months off the road to write and produce it. The resulting album is planned to be released on Anjunabeats[34]
On December 7, 2018, Gabriel & Dresden were nominated for a Best Remixed Recording Grammy Award for the Cosmic Gate remix of their song "Only Road" featuring Sub Teal.[citation needed]
On November 1, 2019, Anjunabeats announced the release date of their third album Remedy. It was released on January 17, 2020, with a full tour supporting the album. Three singles were released: "Coming On Strong", "Keep On Holding" and "Something Bigger".[35]
On March 19, 2020, Gabriel & Dresden started live streaming on Twitch. The broadcast first started on Facebook but when they were kicked off for playing 3 songs that went against Facebook's DMCA policy, they switched over to Twitch and have been regularly live streaming their show Club Quarantine 3 or more times per week. They have since become one of the most viewed music channels on the platform during this time.[36]
This list contains singles by Gabriel & Dresden, aliases and co-productions.
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| Year | Category | Issuer | Result |
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| 2003 | Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 42nd[44] |
| 2004 | Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 41st[44] |
| Best Producers | IDMA | Won | |
| Best Progressive/Trance Track for "As the Rush Comes" by Motorcycle | IDMA | Won | |
| Best Underground Dance Track for "As the Rush Comes" by Motorcycle | IDMA | Nominated | |
| 2005 | Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 29th[44] |
| Best Remixers | IDMA | Nominated | |
| 2006 | Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 20th[44] |
| Best Remixers | IDMA | Won | |
| Best Progressive House/Trance Track for "Without You Near" by Markus Schulz, Gabriel & Dresden & Departure | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Ortofon Best American DJ Award | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Best Producers | IDMA | Nominated | |
| 2007 | |||
| Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 23rd[44] | |
| Best Progressive House/Trance Track for "Tracking Treasure Down" | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Best Producers | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Best Alternative/Rock Dance Track for "Dangerous Power" | IDMA | Won | |
| Best Ortofon American DJ | IDMA | Won | |
| 2008 | |||
| Best Progressive House/Trance Track for "Dangerous Power" | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Best American DJs | IDMA | Won | |
| Best Global DJs | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Best Dance Artist (Group) | IDMA | Nominated | |
| Post-break-up | |||
| Top 100 DJs | DJMag | 65th | |
| Best International DJs for an event at X2 club in Jakarta, Indonesia | REDMA | Won[45] | |
| 2009 | Best American DJs | IDMA | Nominated |
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