Matthias Tanzmann

Matthias Tanzmann, a house DJ and producer from Leipzig in eastern Germany, maintained a residency lasting more than ten years at the Distillery, the city’s leading club, and launched Moon Harbour Recordings alongside Andrè Quaas, at the time a co-owner of the venue. He first gained recognition as a producer through “Feeling Love,” issued in the summer of 1999 as a club favorite under the Gamat 3000 alias he shared with Daniel Scholz. Born in Leipzig in 1977, Tanzmann took up DJing in 1996 and secured his Distillery residency the following year; he also began creating tracks with Scholz as Gamat 3000 in 1998, starting with the “Permanent Funk” 12" on the Hamburg label Dessous Recordings. Their breakthrough came a year later when Freude am Tanzen, the Jena-based house imprint, released “Feeling Love,” which quickly became an anthem endorsed by numerous German selectors, above all Cologne’s Tobias Thomas, who featured it on his Kompakt mix album Für Dich (2000).

Gamat 3000 inaugurated Moon Harbour Recordings in 2000 with the “Radio Moon” 12", while Tanzmann simultaneously issued his first solo outing, Rose Garden, on the same label. In 2001 the duo delivered their debut album, All Seasons, on Dessous Recordings, supported by the singles “Sunglasses & Soda” and “Whispering” plus two remix 12"s drawn from the record; that same year Tanzmann introduced the Deep Drawn project on Moon Harbour, joined by producers Alexander Voigt and Mario Weise. After a comparatively low-output 2002 that yielded only the DJ mix Moon Harbour Flights, Vol. 1, he returned in 2003 with the solo Moon Harbour 12" Those Nights and the Tanzmann & Stefanik (Daniel Stefanik) release Them People, also on Moon Harbour, together with the follow-up mix Moon Harbour Flights, Vol. 2.

Throughout the ensuing period Tanzmann sustained a steady flow of productions both alone and as Tanzmann & Stefanik, chiefly through Moon Harbour yet also via a pair of joint efforts with Steve Bug on Poker Flat Recordings—Tanzbug (2005) and Shick’n Shock (2006). He remained prolific as a remixer during the mid-2000s and compiled the retrospective Five Years of Moon Harbour (2005). His first full-length solo album, Restless, appeared in 2008, a title that suited the ceaselessly active DJ, producer, and label operator.