Matthias Tanzmann

by Jason Birchmeier
 
German house DJ/producer Matthias Tanzmann represents the East German city of Leipzig, where he held a residency at the city's premier club, the Distillery, for over a decade and founded Moon Harbour Recordings with Andrè Quaas, who was then part owner of the club. As a producer he established himself with &Feeling Love,& a summer 1999 club hit released under the Gamat 3000 moniker, which he shared with collaborative producer Daniel Scholz. Born in 1977 in Leipzig, he began DJing in 1996, only a year before being awarded a residency at the Distillery, and he began producing tracks in tandem with Scholz as Gamat 3000 in 1998, beginning with the Permanent Funk 12& on the Hamburg-based label Dessous Recordings. Their name-making release, &Feeling Love,& came a year later in 1999, courtesy of Freude am Tanzen, a house label based in nearby Jena. The track became an anthem and was championed by many German DJs; most notably, it was prominently showcased by Cologne DJ Tobias Thomas on his classic Kompakt mix album Für Dich (2000).
 
As Gammat 3000, Tanzmann and Scholz inaugurated Moon Harbour Recordings in 2000 with their Radio Moon 12& release. Also that year on Moon Harbour, Tanzmann made his solo debut with Rose Garden. In 2001 Gammat 3000 made its full-length debut, All Seasons, on Dessous Recordings; a couple singles (Sunglasses & Soda, Whispering) accompanied the album's release, as did a pair of 12& releases comprised of album remixes. Also in 2001 Tanzmann debuted a new collaborative project for Moon Harbour, Deep Drawn, which also features producers Alexander Voigt and Mario Weise. Tanzmann was relatively quiet in 2002, except for the DJ mix album Moon Harbour Flights, Vol. 1, but returned with new production work in 2003, including a Moon Harbour 12& solo release, Those Nights, and also a Moon Harbour 12& release credited to Tanzmann & Stefanik (i.e., Daniel Stefanik), Them People. He also released the mix album Moon Harbour Flights, Vol. 2 in 2003.
 
In the years that followed, Tanzmann kept up his production pace, both as a solo artist and also as Tanzmann & Stefanik; he primarily released his productions via Moon Harbour but notably branched out for a couple collaborative releases with Steve Bug on Poker Flat Recordings: Tanzbug E.P. (2005) and Shick'n Shock (2006). Furthermore, he was an industrious remixer during the mid-2000s and released the retrospective mix album Five Years of Moon Harbour (2005). In 2008 he released his full-length solo debut, Restless, a fitting title for the ever-active DJ/producer/label head.