With a career that spans over 3 decades, Mousse T is arguably one of the best House producers, ever, to come out of Germany. A pioneer in Uplifting House music Mousse T co-founded the legendary label Peppermint Jam Records in 1993 from which he established himself as an award-winning songwriter, international Dj and critically acclaimed producer.
After delivering a string of phenomenally successful remixes (Calvin Harris’s “Promises feat. Sam Smith”, CamelPhat’s “Cola” and Purple Disco Machine’s “Encore”) The Grammy Award-nominated, Ivor Novello winning, Producer/ DJ is now set to release his third studio album “Where is the Love”. The album is a tantalising joint consisting of 17 beautifully crafted tracks featuring an array of artists including; Roachford, Leela James, Maxi Priest, Brooke Fraiser and Speech (Arrested Development). Offering a whole new level of class it serves to remind us of charismatic, gifted and brilliant Mousse T. still is.
In the late 90’s Mousse T dominated charts across the globe with his infectious Pop anthem “Horny” and “Sexbomb” his classic collaboration with the legend Sir Tom Jones. This success was followed by an Ivor-Novello Award, A Grammy Award nomination, two studio albums,( “Gourmet de Funk” and “All Night Madness”), more international chart entries (“Is It Cos I’m Cool?”, “Pop Muzak” and “Right About Now”) writing and producing movie soundtracks (“Pornorama”, “Heute Bin Ich Blond” and “Mann Tut Was Mann Kann”) and most recently a primetime, mainstream television career as a judge on DSDS (Germany’s Got Talent). And all this, only solidifying his reputation as one of the most respected producer/ Dj’s within the underground Dance Music scene which he played such a huge part in creating.
Please introduce yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a living and why is your artist name Mousse T?
My name is Mousse T. ( coming from a short of Mustafa ) and I´m a music producer. This includes different „hats“ i.e. Songwriter, remixer, DJ, musician, record company man und obviously producing music. This is my passion and I´m already in the game for over 30 years. I´m co-owning several labels, one of them is Peppermint Jam Records, one of the longest running house labels around.
I do what I do for the love of music….and to make it easier for you ( & me ) go ahead and Google haha.
Recently you have collaborated with the world’s biggest house music label to date, Defected. You have been invited to create a new edition of their legendary House Masters series. Previous House Masters editions were headlined by artists such as Dennis Ferrer, Masters at Work, Frankie Kunkles, Armand van Helden to name a few. How did that make you feel? And how was it to work on this amazing project?
Actually Simon Dunmore, Defected´s label boss, and I have quite a history together. Back in the day, Simon used to run a label called AM:PM. When I released Horny as an instrumental in 1997, Simon actually signed it, I did the vocal version and we both had a huge hit! After that Simon went on and founded Defected. On numerous occasions I had the pleasure to work with Defected and I absolutely adore Simon´s love for good music. Obviously it is a big honour for me to be included in the veritable list of House Masters. Since I have quite a back catalogue myself and did loads of remixes I trusted Andy Daniell and Simon from Defected to do the track list for this project. In the meantime I had done an edit of Dennis Ferrer´s „Hey Hey“ for my DJ sets and I also got offered to do a mix on Selace „So hooked on your lovin“, a nice side project from Basement Jaxx´Felix. Basically all came together nicely and these „goodies“ ended up on the compilation too. Recently I enjoy working with Defected on their newest member to the family, Glitterbox. A beautiful club night for music lovers which is celebrating life all over the globe with proper house music!
What do you consider the absolute highlight of your career so far?
That´s a tough question since every time you have a highlight you think, wow, that´s the biggest thing ever and it won´t get bigger ( or better ) than this….but it always does! But to try to answer your question I would like to say: my Grammy nomination in 1998 and releasing „Sexbomb“ with Sir Tom Jones.
Which artists have inspired you?
Right here I would like to recommend the documentary of Quincy Jones. Obviously on a much smaller scale, I love doing what he does and like exploring different fields of entertainment….so he´s a big inspiration. As a DJ I got inspired from fellow German dude Boris Dlugosch and from all the New York boys like Louie, Roger and David Morales because of their great skills and daring music selection.