iiO – Rapture (Original Extended Mix) (2001)
iiO (pronounced “eye-oh”) was a New York City-based dance music act composed of singer and songwriter Nadia Ali and record producer Markus Moser. The group gained prominence for its 2001 single, “Rapture”, which reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. Following the success of “Rapture”, iiO released several singles and the studio album, Poetica in 2005. The album reached number 17 on the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart.
The same year, Ali left iiO to pursue a solo career. Meanwhile, Moser continued to release material, featuring her on vocals, which included the 2006 single, “Is It Love?” that reached number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. In 2011, he released the studio album, Exit 110, which again, featured Ali on vocals and was announced as the final project of the act.
At the time, 17-year-old Nadia Ali was working in the New York offices of Versace, when a co-worker introduced her to producer Markus Moser, who was looking for a female singer to collaborate on some of his productions for a girl group. The two teamed up and started a group that was originally named “Vaiio”, named after the Sony VAIO laptop Ali used to write lyrics on. They later dropped the “va”, on the advice of their label, to avoid causing problems in the future with Sony. Working with Moser, she wrote the lyrics and the vocals for the songs.
According to John Bush at AllMusic, the song “is pure pop, in a dance sense: a post-trance version of vocoder-ized disco, complete with modulating Moroder bassline, an evocative female vocal, and an unmissable hook repeated endlessly.”
