Westbam

Emerging as a central figure in Germany's house and techno landscape from the start of the 1980s, WestBam scored multiple crossover successes that fused house and rave sounds in the late 1980s and early 1990s before turning toward trance and electro. He is best known for launching the Mayday Festival along with the Love Parade, an event that each year drew hundreds of thousands of club enthusiasts into Berlin's streets. Beyond a steady stream of solo and pseudonymous releases, he collaborated closely with producer Klaus Jankuhn, notably in Members of Mayday, the project that supplied the Mayday Festival with its annual anthem.

Maximilian Lenz, born in Münster, took up DJ'ing in 1983 and adopted the name WestBam as an abbreviation of an earlier nickname honoring both his Westphalian birthplace and his primary musical inspiration, Afrika Bambaataa. Relocating to Berlin in 1984, he concentrated on early industrial dance and hip-hop until American house began arriving from across the Atlantic in the mid-1980s. He started producing in 1985 and, like many German dance artists, shifted from Chicago house to the tougher, more Teutonic Detroit techno aesthetic by the late 1980s. After establishing Low Spirit Recordings in 1988, WestBam entered the German charts with the label's first single, "Monkey Say Monkey Do."

He made an unexpected appearance at the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea as a cultural representative of his country and returned to the charts in 1989 with the successes "And Party" and "The Roof Is on Fire." That same year saw the release of his debut album, The Roof Is on Fire. To mark his unexpected breakthrough, WestBam created an outdoor event intended to move the new dance music beyond nightclubs and into wider public view; the Love Parade began that year with fewer than 500 attendees, yet within less than a decade it regularly attracted more than 250,000 participants.

In the early 1990s Low Spirit Recordings enjoyed further hits from Mark Oh and Marusha. WestBam issued his second album, A Practising Maniac at Work, in 1991 and established the Mayday Festival the same year. By the mid-1990s, well after most rave-oriented releases had faded, he returned to straightforward techno and trance with tracks such as 1994's "Celebration Generation" and "Bam Bam Bam," the latter the title cut from his fourth album, which reached the German Top 20. For the tenth anniversary of Low Spirit Recordings he compiled The Age of the DJ Mixer: 10 Years of Low Spirit, a collection featuring several of his own productions. Two 1997 singles, "Sonic Empire" and "Sunshine," both official anthems for Mayday and the Love Parade respectively, entered the German singles charts and led to the album We'll Never Stop Living This Way, which placed in the German Top 40. Far more overtly electro-influenced than earlier efforts, We'll Never Stop Living This Way included a collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa. Around the same period WestBam also partnered with Zulu Nation member Afrika Islam as Mr. X & Mr. Y, issuing New World Order in 1999 and Live from Berlin - 4 Turntables and a Microphone in 2000.

After remixing Rammstein's "Links 2 3 4" in 2001, WestBam released Right On in 2002; its standout single, "Oldschool Baby," featured new wave singer Nena. Do You Believe in the Westworld followed in 2005, supported by live-band tours. After several non-album singles, among them joint releases with Superpitcher and TL Pimps, WestBam issued the triple-CD mix compilation A Love Story 89-10 in 2010. Following the 2011 track "Original Hardcore" with Moguai, he released Götterstrasse in 2013, an album that included guest appearances by Kanye West, Lil Wayne, New Order's Bernard Sumner, and Iggy Pop.