iio 'Poetica' album - MusicRemedy

In 2001, NYC-based dance music duo iio ripped the seams of the dance scenes jeans with the release of its chart-topping single, "Rapture." A heady fusion of house and pop buttressed by an infectious disco-driven bass line, the sing-along party anthem immediately caused a stir on dance floors from Ibiza to London. Yet despite releasing the successful follow-up single, "At The End" in 2002, iio mysteriously retreated into a self-imposed hiatus almost as suddenly as it had emerged on the scene. Now, four years after its dazzling debut, the group has finally resurfaced with the release of its hotly anticipated debut CD, Poetica.

Preceded by the single "Kiss You," Poetica is chock-full of 13 club gems that are not only both accessible and progressive, but also run the gamut from ambient and reggae-tinged to break-pop and trance. The disc's remarkably versatile sounds reflect iio's commitment to distinguish itself within the dance music genre by expertly coalescing electronica and poetry; hence the name Poetica.

iio is DJ-producer-songwriter Markus Moser and Mediterranean singer-songwriter Nadia, who grew up in Queens, New York. "The name iio doesn't really mean anything," Nadia says. "It was inspired by my Sony Vaio laptop computer that I used for writing lyrics," she explains. "At first, we called ourselves Vaiio—with an extra 'i'—because we thought it sounded very space-aged. A few months later, a friend advised us to come up with something different so that the folks at Sony wouldn't bug us. So we dropped the 'va' and ended up with iio."

iio's roots trace back to the summer of 2000, when Markus and Nadia were introduced by a mutual acquaintance who worked with the exotic chanteuse at the Versace boutique in NYC. "I was struggling to find a talented singer whose mind hadn't been poisoned by the industry," Markus explains. "My friend said to me, 'I work with this girl and she's the sweetest thing, but she's insane. She's supposed to sit there and answer the phones but she sings all the time and she has a really nice voice.'" Days later, the two met and Moser was instantly captivated by Nadia's unique vocal style. "She's a tiny girl but her voice is very rich, emotional, sensual and mysterious, and she delivers it without velocity behind it—without belting," he says.

Markus was equally impressed by Nadia's imaginative lyrics. "They were emotional without being too abstract," he says. "You will never hear her sing the kind of cheesy rhymes that you will find in every terrible dance record."

"I believe songwriting should always be clever and poetic," Nadia explains. "I think of myself as a very sensual person and, of course, a hopeless romantic," she continues. "Like most women, I'm very emotional, but I feel like I was sent here to comfort and move others through music, which, to me, is the universal language of the human spirit."

Not long after their first encounter, the duo entered the studio and began working on a number of urban pop tracks, but they didn't find their signature sound until Nadia successfully prodded Markus to indulge her fancy to make a dance record. "I didn't want to do it," Moser recalls. "I had done dance pretty much all my life because I come from a DJ background. I wanted to do something else because I like so many different styles of music that the thought of doing dance again bored me." Still, Markus was no match for Nadia's persuasive powers, which ultimately spawned "Rapture."

The immediate success of "Rapture" convinced Markus that, like it or not, iio's fate had been sealed. Why, then, has it taken four years for the duo to unleash its first full-length album? "I really wanted to give people what I would like an artist to give me," Markus says. "I'm a perfectionist and I wanted to release the kind of album where every song could be a single. I want people to connect with our music so that when they put Poetica in their CD player, they're like, 'Man, this is some music that I can have on constant replay.'"

With a brand new distribution deal in place with industry powerhouse KOCH Entertainment, 2006 promises to be the year—finally—that delivers the music world a full slate of the iio sound that first teased dancefloors and airwaves everywhere with "Rapture". "The demand for a full project from iio never went away after the success of "Rapture" says Markus. "Now it's time to fulfill that demand."

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