Wänz*

Markus Wanzke aka wänz*, who was born in northern Germany in 1973 and has lived in Offenbach since 1994, had ambitions for electronic music from his early childhood days. Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode and other synthesizer heroes were among his favorites from the start, while those around him were more chart-oriented. When he discovered Anne Clark, Nizzer Ebb and Front 242 at the end of the 80s, it was all about him. When he was just 15/16 years old, he started turning the turntables to make various youth centers in his area shake with good, electronic music. After a visit to the Frankfurter Omen in 1990, the course was completely set! Every weekend Frankfurt's nightlife was made unsafe, Omen, Music Hall, XS and all over again. 2 years later, partying alone was no longer enough for the now 19-year-old and he began to organize his first parties in his home area around Darmstadt. In 1994 he started producing his own tracks because it increasingly happened that he felt that a number of tracks on the dance floor were not “finished” or “rounded” and, if he had had the opportunity, he would have liked to have made some changes to various tracks he heard. The artist project wänz* was born. In 1996 he signed his first band acquisition contract with the Frankfurt record company “FRANKFURT BEATS” and started working there at the same time as a DJ promoter, later also partly as A&R, as well as in sales! In 1998 he moved to the Frankfurt music distributor BEV Music AG, where he worked as a product manager and in sales. There he started his own label “Ewige Blumenkraft Rec.” which started in 1998 with the first 3 releases. In 2000 he moved to Meet-Music AG, one of the first online artist MP3 portals of his time, where he took over the complete management and promotion and thus became an integral part of the scene. Further releases and bookings followed. In 2004, wänz*, together with producer Jan Kalt, founded the project “wänz* + zolo”, a combo for timeless, electronic music, mainly in the tech house sector. At that time, the Open Network movement was just beginning, from which portals such as MySpace and Facebook emerged, on which the combination “wänz* + zolo” was able to reach a broad fan base of well over 40,000 and thus became known nationwide. In 2012, the two producers, whose equipment mainly consists of hardware synthesizers, decided to found their own label, which they called HARDWARE FREAKZ. wänz* can now look back on over 25 years of DJ and producer experience, he knows the scene and the tastes of the crowd like no other and with this knowledge he manages to delight the celebrating crowd every time! Here is a small selection of locations where wänz* has already worked as a DJ: Tanzhaus West (Frankfurt) / Hirsch (Nuremberg) / S-Club (Saarbrücken) / Music Hall (Frankfurt) / Hypnopuls (Bad Nauheim) / New York (Michelstadt) / Studio 48 (Darmstadt) / Camouflage (Cologne) / Art Theater (Cologne) / Underground (Grafenwöhr) / Sun Sound (Weiden) / Nuclear Fusion (Düren) / Gatteria (Lengfeld) / Octagon (Aachen) / Goldene Krone (Darmstadt) / Prodo (Frankfurt)