Timo Maas & Santos in Leeds

Timo Maas & Santos at System, Mint Club, Leeds | Photo Report

As would be expected of two DJ’s and producers with a combined tenure of over 40 years in the electronic music scene, both Timo Maas and Santos have turned their hand to many different styles of dance; trance, progressive, breakbeat and house are just some of the many genres the duo have best been known for over the past two decades. Even five years ago it would have been highly unlikely to see the two featuring on the same DJ bill, let alone playing back to back together, but since a chance meeting in a club around four years ago, they decided to join as one and make records together as Mutant Clan. Now living across the street from each other in rural Germany, they focus their joint production efforts on a much more techno orientated sound, which led to the creation of Rockets & Ponies; a label set up primarily to host their 17-minute epic ‘Chinese Massage’ track.

Now in it’s third year of infancy, the Rockets and Ponies imprint descends onto the Mint Club on the first weekend of what is one of the busiest months on the electronic music calendar in recent years. The Royal Wedding has presented two four-day weekends in succession, presenting promoters with the opportunity of squeezing in even more events than usual. System, normally a party held only once a month, has four events booked in alone within four weeks, with the likes of Dyed Soundorom, Shaun Reeves, Benoit & Sergio, Cassy and Raresh all scheduled to appear this month as well as the Rockets and Ponies duo. This fact, along with the multitude of other events taking place in Leeds this month, means it would be no surprise if one or two of the nights were to take a hit on numbers through the door.

The warm ambience provided by residents Annie Errez and Bobby O’Donnell set the tone for the beginning of the night as the first few customers entered the club and took their position on the few scattered stools at the edge of the dance floor, and it was a solid twenty five minutes of beatless atmospherics before the first kick drum dropped into the mix. As residents of the night since its humble beginnings in the backroom of a pub on the outskirts of Leeds, they understand more than most how to build up the mood and gradually shifted through deep techno and shuffling house, with the formidable low sub bass rattling the mirrors throughout the club the only constant in an almost exemplary warm up set.



It was clear by 1AM that this was not going to be a System night bursting at the same capacity levels as the previous Ricardo and Locodice nights during the year, but nevertheless a reasonably busy dance floor was grooving along as Timo entered the DJ booth just after the turn of the hour. It was a noticeably older crowd on the dance floor tonight – this could be due in part to the temporary exodus of thousands of students that had flocked home for the Easter break, or it could be due to the fact that ten years ago a whisper of the name ‘Timo Maas’ could command almost the same level of hysteria as the aforementioned Villalobos does now, and that much of this older crowd from that generation had ventured out to see what the big German was doing now after a few years in the wilderness.

The ante in the club upped as Timo began to cue up his first record, the volume levels cranked instantly as he layered a Chicago-esque vocal, the first of the evening, over some percussive techno. The Jamie Jones remix of Green Velvet’s ‘Flash’ brought the first noticeable crowd response of the evening, hands raised aloft as the LED ceiling panel clicked in for the first time, right on cue as Cajmere’s warped vocal uttered ‘cameras ready, prepare to flash’.

Timo continued solo for around thirty minutes until Santos joined him in the booth and from then on they followed a fairly strict pattern of one on, one off until the close of the night. The different musical paths the two have trodden made for an interesting contrast of music – Timo’s choice of tracks full of tribal percussion and long, drawn out melodies harked back to elements of his previous days as a progressive house DJ, whereas Santos, on the other hand, seemed to pick out much tougher tracks, all generally a little harder, heavier and darker than those that Mr Maas had laid down before him. This mix of styles ensured a lack of monotony, with peaks and troughs of energy levels apparent on the dance floor, whilst at the same time never veering far enough away from one another to make for too much of a contrast in music.

As 4am ticked over the club had begun to filter out in most areas but there was still a relatively healthy dance floor grooving to the now slightly tougher sounds of the Rockets and Ponies duo – in fact, when the house lights flashed into life to signal the end of the night just after quarter to six, much of this crowd still remained there, determined to soldier on until the last kick drum had dropped. Whilst tonight’s event might not be one that remains in the memory bank for years to come, it was a solid performance by System nonetheless and confirmed that after dropping off the radar for a while, both Timo Maas and Santos are now back in some of the best form of their already glittering careers.

Adam Daniels