Timo Maas

Since the dawn of the 1990s, German DJ and producer Timo Maas has explored a wide array of electronic dance music genres, encompassing progressive house, trance, acid, breaks, and electro-house. His signature wobbly bass tones paired with punchy, groovy rhythms shaped 21st-century EDM through landmark tracks, above all the influential Azzido Da Bass remix “Dooms Night.” Although his catalog centers on 12-inch singles, Maas has also issued several mix compilations and a handful of full-length albums that include vocal contributions from Kelis, Neneh Cherry, and Placebo’s Brian Molko. Among the artists he has remixed are Paul McCartney, Madonna, Depeche Mode, and numerous additional high-profile names. As a club DJ he has held a long-term residency at Ibiza’s DC10 while performing at other renowned venues worldwide such as Twilo, Tresor, and Tunnel.

Maas first encountered music through radio broadcasts in his childhood, purchasing his initial record at age nine and acquiring his first turntables at seventeen. Early performances took place across Germany, where he typically played Top 40 material in bars while occasionally slipping in a techno selection. His debut official set occurred in 1982 inside the basement of a friend’s house during a private party, yet it took another six years before he received his first proper all-techno booking. Exposure to the emerging German rave circuit arrived in 1992 via an Easter event, after which a succession of major rave appearances and regional recognition followed. Although production experiments began in the early 1980s, his first release, “The Final XS,” did not surface until 1995; Maas himself later described the happy-hardcore-leaning track as cheesy, and it achieved limited success. He soon collaborated with producer Gary D on the stronger-selling “Die Herdplatte,” which also secured Maas a residency at Hamburg’s Tunnel from 1994 through 1996.

Links established in England drew Maas to Bristol’s progressive house venue Lakota and its affiliated Hope Recordings imprint. Between 1996 and 1997 he issued singles on Hope, Lakota, Phuture Wax, and UK44. Working with Andy Bolleshon and Martin Buttrich, he recorded under the collective identities Orinoko and Kinetic A.T.O.M.; he additionally partnered with manager and friend Leon Alexander as Mad Dogs and Englishmen. In 2000 Maas joined Deep Dish for a residency at New York’s Twilo. Capitalizing on the breakthrough of the U.K. garage–crossing “Dooms Night” remix and his own track “Ubik,” he delivered the 2000 mix album Music for the Maases, built largely from his productions and remixes. After another mix set, Connected, his studio debut Loud arrived on Paul Oakenfold’s Perfecto label in early 2002. More pop-leaning than earlier material, the album reached the U.K. Top 50 and yielded singles including “To Get Down,” later reworked by Fatboy Slim, and the Kelis collaboration “Help Me.”

After 2003’s Music for the Maases 2 and a Grammy-nominated remix of Tori Amos’ “Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas” in the Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category, Maas issued his second studio album Pictures on Warner Bros. in 2005. Retaining the dance-pop approach of Loud, the richly arranged record featured Neneh Cherry and Brian Molko yet proved less commercially successful. Eventually parting ways with co-producer Buttrich, Maas teamed with Santos (Sante Pucello) to form the duo Mutant Clan around 2008. By then he had moved away from trance and breaks toward deep house, minimal techno, and tech-house productions and DJ sets. He founded the Rockets & Ponies label and mixed the double-CD Balance 017 in 2010.

In 2013 Maas released his third studio album, Lifer, on Rockets & Ponies, again featuring Molko alongside James Lavelle of UNKLE and Katie Cruel. The following year he mixed Crossing Wires 002 for Canadian imprint My Favorite Robot. Regular work with the label’s James Teej began with a remix of Roísín Murphy’s “Jealousy” and continued with the 2015 single “Thingzz.” In 2016 Maas and Teej reworked “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” from Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band on the Run; the project, originally started years earlier by Maas alone, reached completion only after the pair revisited it. First pressed anonymously as a white-label 12-inch, the track received an official Virgin release and earned a Grammy nomination later that year. Additional singles appeared on Last Night on Earth and Rejected, while his limited Record Store Day 12-inch remix of Moby’s “Porcelain” came out on his own label.