Timo Maas

Lower Saxony, Hamburg and the German rave scene

Timo Maas was born on 27 July 1969. Most sources give his birthplace as Bückeburg, a small town in Lower Saxony, though some biographies say Hannover, the city he has long been associated with.

He started early. He has said that he began collecting records in the late 1970s and first played music to his friends at a party in 1982, at the age of 13. He bought his first set of turntables at 17. For years his gigs were the kind most DJs of his generation started with: playing chart records at local parties and bars, slipping in the occasional techno record when the room would take it. By his own account, it was about six years after that first party before he played his first full techno set.

In 1992 he found the German rave scene, which was then growing fast outside Berlin and Frankfurt. He played raves in and around Hannover and elsewhere in Germany and built a name in the underground there. He held a residency at a mixed night in Hannover, and one profile credits him as one of the people who brought the rave scene to that part of Lower Saxony.

His first record, "The Final XS", came out in 1995. His second, "Die Herdplatte", was a collaboration with the Hamburg producer Gary D, and it did better. Gary D also helped him get a residency at Tunnel in Hamburg, one of the city's best-known clubs, which he held from 1994 to 1996.

Bristol, Lakota and Hope

The connection that made Timo Maas matter to British clubs came through Leon Alexander, his manager and long-time friend. Alexander had British contacts, and through him Maas began playing in the UK in the mid-1990s. He has since described how hard it was, without the internet, to get booked in what he called the motherland of club music.

The breakthrough booking was Lakota in Bristol, the club most associated with the city's progressive and tech-house scene of the time. Maas held a residency there for three years.

Bristol also gave him a label. Hope Recordings, which grew out of the same Bristol scene, began releasing his records in the second half of the 1990s, both under his own name and as Orinoko, a project with Andy Bolleshon and Martin Buttrich. The best-known Orinoko record is "Mama Konda", which received strong support from DJs including Sasha and Carl Cox. Maas also released singles in 1996 and 1997 through Lakota's own label and others, and recorded with Leon Alexander under names including Mad Dogs, and with Buttrich and Bolleshon as Kinetic A.T.O.M.

The most important of those names is Martin Buttrich. Over the next decade, Buttrich was Maas's studio partner and co-producer on almost everything that made his name. When people talk about "the Timo Maas sound" of 1999 to 2002, they are really talking about Maas and Buttrich together, working in their studio in Hannover.

Hope is worth a sentence of its own, because it links Maas to other names in this archive. Hope's own history credits his "Der Schieber" with taking the label into a much bigger league, and says that its "Funkin for Hope" mix helped shape a new breaks scene. The same label went on to sign James Holden and Max Graham, both of whom turn up in TMA's tracklists again and again.

"Der Schieber" and the sound of 1999

"Der Schieber" is the record that best explains how Maas fitted into progressive house. It came out around 1999 and 2000 (sources date it to both years, probably because of the gap between promo and commercial release) and reached number 50 in the UK.

Musically, it was a long, rolling, tough club record: chunky, distorted bass, a sense of menace rather than euphoria, and plenty of space for a DJ to work with. It sat comfortably next to the darker progressive records that Bedrock and Hooj were releasing, but it also had a funk and a weight that pointed somewhere else, towards breaks. That is why DJs from very different scenes could all play it. A 2003 review looking back at it called it an "oh-so-German progressive trance anthem", which tells you how the trance side heard it.

"Ubik" and Oakenfold

"Ubik", featuring vocals by Martin Bettinghaus, was released on Perfecto, Paul Oakenfold's label, in 2000. It reached number 33 in the UK, number 4 on the dance chart and number 1 on the indie chart. It came in more than one flavour: the UK CDs carried "Ubik: The Breakz", "Ubik: The Techno" and "Ubik: The Dance", which is a neat summary of how many scenes Maas was trying to reach at once.

You can hear exactly how much Oakenfold liked it in the TMA trance archive. "Ubik" is in his [Essential Mix from Home in London on 31 October 1999](https://themixarchive.co.uk/trance/set/paul-oakenfold-home-london-essential-mix-1999), months before its commercial release. It is in his [Liverpool University Essential Mix, broadcast in November 1999](https://themixarchive.co.uk/trance/set/paul-oakenfold-liverpool-university-essential-mix-1999). It is second in his [Essential Mix of 13 February 2000](https://themixarchive.co.uk/trance/set/paul-oakenfold-essential-mix-2000-02-13), just before Medway's "Flanker". It is in his [Essential Mix of 21 May 2000](https://themixarchive.co.uk/trance/set/paul-oakenfold-essential-mix-2000-05-21). And it is second again at [Creamfields Ireland in June 2000](https://themixarchive.co.uk/trance/set/paul-oakenfold-creamfields-ireland-2000).

Five documented Oakenfold recordings in eight months. Only a handful of records in this archive turn up that consistently in one DJ's sets. And the placement is revealing: "Ubik" usually comes early, as a tough, attention-grabbing opener before the bigger melodic trance records. Oakenfold was using it to set a mood that the rest of his set would then resolve.

"Dooms Night": the remix that went everywhere

The record that made Timo Maas famous wasn't his own.

"Dooms Night" was a 1999 single by the German producer Azzido Da Bass, released on Club Tools. Maas and Buttrich were asked to remix it. According to Maas's own later accounts, their first attempt was turned down, and they then made the version that became famous in a single three-hour session.

The Timo Maas remix was released in the UK on 9 October 2000 and reached number 8 on the UK Singles Chart and number 1 on the UK dance chart. It has been said to have sold more than half a million copies worldwide.

What made it extraordinary was where it travelled. Built on a filthy, rubbery bassline and a stripped-back, swaggering groove, it was played by progressive and trance DJs, by house DJs and, most surprisingly, by the UK garage scene, which adopted it as its own. A separate version by Stanton Warriors, released as "Dooms Night (Revisited)" with garage-style beats and an MC, made the connection explicit. Maas himself has said that it was the garage scene's take-up of the record that really made it blow up.

Simon Reynolds wrote about the record at the time, and Mixmag's music editor later listed it among the "uncategorisable" club records of 2000. That word is the right one. "Dooms Night" isn't a progressive record or a garage record or a breaks record. It is all of them at once, which is why it worked.

Music for the Maases and Twilo

In the wake of "Dooms Night", Maas released Music for the Maases on 3 October 2000: a double-CD mix made up almost entirely of his own productions and remixes, opening with his remix of "Dooms Night". It came out through Hope in the UK and Kinetic in the US, and it was put together with American listeners partly in mind.

The tracklist is a good map of his late-1990s work in one place: Mad Dogs' "Better Make Room", "Der Schieber", a remix of Green Velvet's "Flash", Paganini Traxx's "Zoë", "Twin Town" with Ian Wilkie, and two versions of Orinoko's "Mama Konda". If you want to understand the Maas and Buttrich sound in its natural setting rather than one record at a time, this is the place to start.

America was listening. In 2000, Maas began a residency at Twilo in New York alongside Deep Dish, at the club that had made Sasha and Digweed's names in the United States. Twilo would close after a police raid in May 2001, so his time there was short, but it put him at the centre of the most important progressive club in America just as the music was turning tougher.

In 2001 he mixed Connected – Perfecto Presents… Timo Maas for Oakenfold's label, and in the same year he played his first set at DC10 in Ibiza, the club where he would become a resident for more than fifteen years.

Loud, 2002

Maas and Buttrich started work on his debut artist album in 2001. Loud was released on 19 March 2002, on Perfecto in the UK and Kinetic in the US, and reached number 41 on the UK albums chart.

It was a deliberate move away from the club. Maas described it as an attempt to bring alternative rock and dance music together, and it featured guest vocalists including Kelis, MC Chickaboo, Martin Bettinghaus and Finley Quaye. "Help Me", with Kelis, sampled Bernard Herrmann's title music for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The singles did well. "To Get Down", with vocals by Phil Barnes, reached number 14 in the UK, topped the UK dance and indie charts, and reached number 4 on Billboard's US dance club chart. It went on to be used in the 2003 remake of The Italian Job and in FIFA Football 2003, where a Fatboy Slim remix appeared. "Shifter", with MC Chickaboo, reached number 38, and "Help Me" number 65.

For listeners who had come to Maas through "Der Schieber", Loud could be a shock. One contemporary review described the leap from German progressive trance to grinding guitars and English lyrics as hard to explain. That was rather the point. By 2002, Maas had decided that the most interesting thing about his sound was how far it could travel, not where it came from.

Remixes and the wider career

Through the early 2000s Maas and Buttrich were among the most sought-after remixers in dance music. Their list includes Madonna ("Don't Tell Me"), Muse ("Sunburn", which appeared on Music for the Maases), Placebo ("Special K"), Garbage, Moby, Moloko, Fatboy Slim, Jamiroquai and Depeche Mode, for whom they remixed "Enjoy the Silence" in 2004. Their remix of Tori Amos's "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas" was nominated for a Grammy in the remixed recording category in 2004.

A second album, Pictures, followed in 2005, again co-produced with Buttrich over two years in Hannover, with guests including Kelis, Neneh Cherry and Placebo's Brian Molko. After that, Maas and Buttrich gradually went their separate ways.

From 2007 Maas worked with the Italian producer Santos, under the name Mutant Clan among others. The two mixed a double CD for the Balance series in 2010, Balance 017. He set up his own label, Rockets & Ponies, which has released music from artists including Ricardo Villalobos and Nightmares on Wax, and in 2013 released his third album, Lifer, with guests including James Lavelle of UNKLE and, once again, Brian Molko.

In 2016, a rework of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five", made with James Teej, was first released as an anonymous white label, sold out in hours, then came out officially on Virgin and earned Maas a second Grammy nomination.

Why he belongs in this archive

Timo Maas doesn't belong here because he neatly fitted the progressive house label. He is here because, for about three years, his records were the bridge between progressive house and almost everything around it.

Listen to TMA's guide to the [2000–2003 shift](https://themixarchive.co.uk/deep-archive), when progressive sets got tougher, darker and more percussive, and you are hearing a direction that "Der Schieber" and "Ubik" pointed towards early. Listen to Oakenfold's 1999 and 2000 sets and you hear "Ubik" used to set a tougher mood before the melodies arrive. Listen to [Anthony Pappa's Nubreed 001](https://themixarchive.co.uk/archive/anthony-pappa-global-underground-nubreed-001-cd1) and you hear an early Timo Maas remix sitting alongside James Holden. And listen to "Dooms Night" in a garage set and you realise how far one bassline from Hannover travelled.

His own career then went somewhere else entirely: into a long residency at DC10, into deeper and more eclectic house, into collaborations with rock singers and remixes of pop stars. That later career is not this archive's subject. But in 1999 and 2000, when the progressive and trance scenes were at their peak and starting to split apart, Timo Maas made records that both sides, and several others besides, wanted to play.