SATOSHI TOMIIE

By Danny Corvini

Satoshi Tomiie is to many the biggest thing to come out of Japan armed with a house music record under his arm. Responsible for a massive collaboration with Frankie Knuckles back in 1989 in the legendary "Tears", Satoshi went on to become a major player in the Def Mix crew, with David Morales and Knuckles, remixing the likes of Simply Red, David Bowie, U2 and Mariah Carey. The boy has DJed all over the world and blew many away when he released his debut album "Full Lick".

He started young, taking up the piano at an early age at the request of his parents, training for ten years. He dug the sounds of jazz and later hip hop, the latter sparking a passion that would lead to production. Then of course came house. It was bye-bye B-boy and cheers to Chicago as he heard the first mix-tapes out of the windy city. He started playing around, and then got picked up by a Japanese cosmetic company who asked Satoshi to make a track for their product promo parties. DJing at the party was none other than Frankie Knuckles, who quickly saw the potential in Satoshi’s sounds and asked him if he’d be interested in collaborating.

The collaboration became an all-time classic for house DJs, and so Satoshi quickly realised it was his time to pack up bags and move to the Big Apple. Without a place to live, David Morales invited him in, and as they say, the rest is history.

Now several years down the track Satoshi has his own label SAW Recordings dropping bombs all over the place, and has a mixed CD for Def Mix on the way. His tracks are masterpieces, combining jazz, hip hop, soul, drum ‘n bass, and of course, deep, dark & dirty house. His remixes and pounding DJ sets are sought all over the world. Now it’s Australia’s turn once more. Ladies and gentlemen, Satoshi Tomiie…

We are trying to get back to normal. People are still in shock but you can’t do that forever, y’know?

Because of this? No. For other reasons, maybe.

Yeah, a lot of DJs are lending their time to work to raise money for the families of people who lost their lives. They’ve been quite helpful. And I’m sure that people want to go out and have a really good time, they are definitely starting to go out more.

I do a monthly thing at Filter 14 on the West Side. It’s on a Tuesday, so a lot of people complain about it, because they have to go back to the office on Wednesday morning. But it’s quite a good night, people sometime stay until 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock in the morning. They change and go straight to work. They’re hardcore!

Yeah! It’s not perfect. It could be better. That’s all I can say.

There’s Vinyl, of course, but as far as liquor goes Centro-fly does have a liquor license and Vinyl doesn’t. But Vinyl stays open late because there is no liquor, whereas drinkers get tired early and they go home!

It is going well. To be honest I am quite surprised at the reaction I’m getting from the people all over the world. I expected it to be very underground, a couple of thousand copies, but a lot of people want to hear what we do. It’s hard work running a label but it’s been good.

No. Some of them are New York based, some of them European, and the next one is from Lexicon Avenue (who are currently touring Australia). It doesn’t need to necessarily be local producers, it just needs to be what we consider quality. Some are from Japan, some from England, some from Brazil, Canada.. There’s a lot of new talent out there.

We use the Virus distributors.

We would like to but we’re still a bit short of manpower at the moment. We’re still at the basic stages.

Yeah, I don’t want people to stick to one style. I mean the first couple of releases were deep, dark and scary! Then we had a release that was techy, and some off -rhythm vocals. As long as it has quality, we like that… It’s gotta be something that I want to play in a club.

Yeah, but the different kind of vocals. I have what I call "B-side taste". As in a record has an A-side and a B-side, and the A-side is usually quite uplifting and sometimes commercial. The B-side is always a bit more weird. So I have B-side taste!

Um, I dunno. That’s my question! Because at the moment I’m pretty much busy running the label and I have to take care of a lot of stuff, so it’s a while away - maybe next year, two year’s time, whatever!

I am redo-ing it. It probably won’t be out until January.

Yeah, of course. Australia is very, very nice. And over here it’s like freezing cold, and down there it’s summertime, so.. I’m looking forward to it!

The stuff I’m making - deep and dirty house music.