Timo Maas has been busy over the last years, he has produced and remixed more than 100 tracks, including classics like Orinoko's “Mama Konda” and his marvels mix of “Doom's Night” by Azzido Da Bass. As a world renowned DJ he travels the world. He has recorded for Hope Recordings, Hooj Choons, FFRR, Bush, current label Perfecto and today he runs his own label four:twenty.  Timo's residency at The Tunnel, Hamburg (1994-96), marked his breakthrough.

Producing the trance record “Die Herdplatte” with co-resident DJ Gary D, won him acclaim overseas, and led to his involvement with the Bristol-based Hope Recordings. Soon he was booked everywhere and has since gone on to DJ all over the world including residencies at Twilo in New York and Cream in Liverpool.

It was the genre defining “Mama Konda” recorded in 1997 at Time Tools Studios under the incarnation Orinoko that caused the biggest stir in the dance fraternity. A standard in the boxes of every DJ from Morales to Sasha, “Mama Konda” was a percussive floorslayer that cemented Timo's reputation as the hottest kid on the block, reaching the Top 20 in both UK and US club charts. Releasing the tracks "Der Schieber" on 48K/Perfecto and later “Ubik” he entered the top 40 hit list and his name has become well known.

Remixes for Madonna “Don't Tell Me”, Placebo “Special K'”, Kelis “Young, Fresh & New”, Fatboy Slim “Star 69”, Garbage “Breaking Up The Girl”,  Moloko “Familiar feeling “,Roger Sanchez ”Nothing to prove” and Moby’s  “We are all made of stars” have also brought Timo to the attention of a mainstream audience. The hit “To Get Down” marked the coming of his debut album “Loud” released on Perfecto in 2002, followed with the singles “Shifter” and “Help Me”. On Perfecto he also released the mix compilation “Connected”. 2003 sees the second release in his “Music For The Maases” series on Hope Recordings.

When listening to your  album “Loud” I get a feeling of a more funky, mysterious and experimental Timo, than I have heard before (e.g. from your remixes).

- It’s surprising isn’t it? I think nobody really know what the Timo Maas sound is now, our identification about doing remixes was about delivering a couple of singers like the Bush stuff or “Ubik”, always singers without any connection to a full work and the identification was already there but now this is the full work, now when you want to introduce the Timo Maas sound to your friends, put on this album and lean back. And you are exactly there where we would describe is the Timo sound.

You are drawing on a lot of different influences.

- Yea - my production partner Martin Buttrich and myself we don’t see too many boarders we shouldn’t touch, we got hip-hop influences on “Hash Driven” still our roots in “Old Skool Vibes “, ”Like Love” the club roots, the deep nasty funky tracks, tools for the DJ plus the full vocal stuff like “Help Me” with Kelis. When you have a little more space like album space we just want to do the thinks and we just want to realize the ideas that we are having, which you normally can’t do for a single or for a B-side, we wanted to do some different stuff. To experiment – just to follow the flow. In the beginning we didn’t have a picture of the album as is now, we just started and collecting different materials. It’s just like a cool flow and at the end of the day we were pretty surprised that we had done a work like that. But this is how we work, you just can’t band creativity, you can band certain thinks but you never know what the product is going to be at the end, I am pretty happy it is like that.  

When I listen to the album, I get the feeling that it is two folded – one part listening and the other for dancing?

-It’s both. It can kick your ass when you go to a club when you need it for a warm up, you play it a little louder and it works. Or when you are calming down you are listening to it less loudly. You are relaxing, it is not bad for chilling out, but it really depends. It’s the medicine for any directional life more or less - I hope so, for me it works like that for I can still hear it.  

What is your favourite track on the album?

- It changes from week to week, month to month. I mean surely the highlight is the Kelis track “Help Me”, but it depends, on this Friday I am going to my club gig so I think it’s going to be “Like Love” and “Old Skool Vibes” the more nasty dirty tracks, because it’s Friday, and I’m going to do a 4 hours set.

The track “Manga” is my favourite track on the album!

- It is a bit futuristic; I like “Manga” a lot. It got the “old skool” ingredients and it sounds very futuristic. The noises are a bit unusual but as usual for us we always do something with crazy noises or something like that. That’s just a part of the Timo Maas sound.

You use different names like Mad Dog, Orinoko – tell me about the background for that?

- Actually for different music styles, we wanted to use different names. Special Orinoko is a little more trance orientated, the last track we actually produced was “Island”, and was 2½ year ago, and it was 2 years old when it was released. It is a more trancy more commercial direction as well, and it was just a little too much for the moniker Timo Maas. Mad Dog is for the more strange stuff, and we are thinking of doing a new Mad Dog single later in the year. But I’m not sure about Orinoko, I think that this sort of music is more or less dead for me. We still have a track in the background that was left from the album production that was too commercial for the album. It‘s a wonderful track – this might be a new Orinoko single it might be a new project we will see. At this time we are focusing on Timo but we have plans on doing some other stuff as well, e.g. to produce artist – there are more to come.

You have your own label 4:twenty recordings – tell me about that!

-It was just time for it – it is my playground as an A/R. We are doing the label together, again I’m the face and it’s up to me what we release and what we don’t release. The guys from Hope and Martin are both in label as well, but it’s fully under my control. I just want to release cool stuff.

On the decks as a DJ – are your style different from you own productions / compilation – eg. “Connected”?

- Mmmmm I play an exotic sound as well as DJ. It’s not like I am playing Bedrock 30 to 35 in a row. I just play a little bit of everything; let us say I play modern definition of funk music. The main speed I play is between 128 and 132 BPM, sometimes slower but not faster, and I just play some sort of funky music, it has got elements of house, techno, trance and a lot of break beats – I just love it, to play this music and put all this together in my way – and it works. I would describe my music as Progressive Funk.

You have also done “Connected” and “Music For The Maases” compilation albums?

- Yea the “Music For The Maases” is like a best of Timo Maas and the “Connected“ was the first and last DJ compilation mix album I am doing. I am just not a big fan of mix compilation; I think that you really can’t reflect a proper DJ set on a double CD 3 or 4 month after you have mixed it. It doesn’t matter how exclusive the tracks you have when mixing it, so when you release the album the tracks are also released. You can’t really transport the sort of energy, the electricity this sort of atmosphere from a club on a piece of vinyl or on a CD. So I’m not a big fan of that – but I still do a monthly mix CD for my friends, this is for me to learn my new records. 

In 2001 we should have spoken when you were set to perform in Copenhagen – what happened?

- I am not sure it’s so long ago, but as I remember it was due to the album production when Kelis came or some thing like, I can’t really remember. But it was a situation like that. I had to make a decision what is more important doing one more DJ gig or to finish a track for the album. You know the album now and I think it was worth doing the album and I am coming back to Denmark. It’s going to be a hard weekend at Roskilde, Glastonbury and Creamfield in one weekend. So three of the biggest festivals in one weekend.

Full interview published: Clubbing Magazine # 4 April - May  2002