In anticipation of the 15 Years of Moon Harbour event, celebrating the life of the label, at Warehouse (unfortunately now cancelled), The Gryphon had a brief chat with label boss and world-class selector, Matthias Tanzmann, to see what he is up to…
Growing up in Leipzig through the 90s, Matthias Tanzmann was surrounded by dance music. Being only ten miles from Berlin, he explains how it didn’t take long for the first illegal raves and clubs to pop up. Nor did it take long for Matthias to immerse himself in the scene and from there grew his love of house and techno. His early influences included the likes of Matthew Herbert, St.Germain, Rizzo and Daft Punk and later on Steve Bug and the sound of Poker Flat recordings.
Since then, Matthias has played all over the world whilst holding a summer residency for the famous Circoloco at DC-10. He describes it as the ‘essence of Ibiza clubbing’ and ‘even though it got bigger and busier over the years it still manages to create that magic feeling. Honestly, what other club can compete with these line ups every Monday?’.
Matthias started his label ‘Moon Harbour’ in 2000 and since then it has featured artists such as Boris Werner, Jan Krueger, Seuil and Waff. Furthermore, Moon Harbour has released full length albums from the likes of Luna City Express, Matrinez, Ekkohaus and Tanzmann himself. The high quality tech-house output has led the label to host stages around the world at festivals/conferences such as Sonar, WMC and ADE. The label has had such impact in it’s home city that the New York times included as reason for Leipzig being one of the 31 best places to visit in 2010!
His label has now been running for 15 years and Matthias told us a bit about the sound: ‘The Moon Harbour sound ranges from organic deep to tech house with a certain groove and originality to it. When I am DJing it is pretty similar to that. Sometimes I go a bit further towards techno though. When signing new artists I am looking to find these attributes and I am trying to see if the artists fits to our label.’
The proceeding months sees Matthias celebrate 15 years of Moon Harbour around the world until BPM festival, Mexico in early January. Alongside this Matthias will be releasing a new EP as well a remix for Jamie Jones on Kerri Chandler’s Kaoz Theory. With so much promise in store for the coming year, this would’ve meant the event at The Warehouse on the 5th something of a jewel in the final weeks of the student calendar for this term.
Harry Pemberton
(Photo credits: Vice)