Published in the February 2009 Issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 22 - Number 2
By Emily Tan

New York City—Changing times, it seems, can cause drastic reactions. For many DJs, some of the industry’s immediate indicators have fostered a degree of self-evaluation, perhaps even full-blown acquiescence to the pressures of fickle or shrinking audiences.
But not for Tommie Sunshine.

Despite an ominous economic environment, he retains a global fanbase that appreciates and supports his chunky, funky, electro-rock grooves. Despite the trend that sees DJs offering evenings of spoonful-sized mash-ups or chunks of can’t-miss classics, he plays what he wants, and most of that is very recent material. We may all be in peril, but Tommie Sunshine is having the time of his life.

Why? After years spinning in the shadows of ravedom and then catching the attention of clubland by co-writing Felix da Housecat’s ’02 classic “Silver Screen (Shower Scene),” the 37-year-old Sunshine has hit his artistic stride. Still a hot remixer, Sunshine continues his solid relationship with the industry, which has hired him to re-rub songs by rock acts like Fall Out Boy, R&B artists like Kelis and icons like Yoko Ono—he contributed to last year’s chart-topping remix package of “Give Peace a Chance.” He’s created a lasting place for his music—a thrilling development for all track-making DJs—but he’s also found a constant companion (Daniela, whom he calls “my life, my wife, my muse”) and a never-ending schedule that allows him an upfront view of a world ready for his upfront tracks.

Born Thomas John Lorello, the Chicago-bred Sunshine gained a modicum of fame playing the aforementioned Midwestern raves, then moved to Atlanta, where worked as a buyer for Satellite Records and served as a kickstarter for that city’s nascent electronic scene. Since moving to New York at the turn of the decade, Sunshine has worked closely with studio partner Mark Verbos. In nearly nine years in the Big Apple, the Brooklyn-based Sunshine has lent his DJ and production skills to the fashion industry, TV, film, and video gaming.

Sunshine’s latest is Relax, This Won’t Hurt (Ultra Records), a raging dancefloor mix comp that features manic electro moments, techy sirens, gut-punching kick drums, warped grooves, diva vamps and lyrical provocations all around. The title is taken from the last words written by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson before he took his own life, but it’s also an allegory for the more obscure dance tunes missing from other compilations, as well as a commentary on the state of the economy.

It’s true that the late Dr. Thompson also wrote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” But with Relax, This Won’t Hurt, Tommie Sunshine seems to be saying, “Tough times call for tough tunes.” DJ Times spoke with Tommie Sunshine while en route to the Amsterdam Dance Event. Here’s what went down.

DJ Times: The track selection on your latest comp, Relax, This Won’t Hurt (Ultra), is quite eclectic. What inspired it?

Sunshine: There were a lot of things that went into it, like the state of the country right now.
DJ Times: Are you really that pessimistic?

Sunshine: The economy went down the tubes—it really did. The reason I’m playing such hard-edged music right now is that we’re living in an incredibly difficult time. I saw all this coming five years ago. There’s a breakdown in the actual fabric in the scene of the music right now. The artists on the CD are really rebuilding the foundation of what’s house music, although people are afraid of that word. It was a necessary thing. I felt like this presentation of music is really important, especially on a label like Ultra, because it’s such a commercially available label.

DJ Times: So, the music on this compilation, which is sort of aggressive-sounding, was a reflection of the economy?

Sunshine: I was told a story recently about Luca, who does the “Trouble & Bass” parties in Brooklyn. There are two tracks on the CD of his. He said the party last week was the craziest party he’d ever thrown. At the end of the night, the needles were broken, because the DJs were backspinning out of every record. Everybody was so intense! There was a moment when he was like, “Is this gonna get out of control?” That’s how we are with everything right now. No one knows what’s going to happen next. It’s a big time of indecision, and I think my CD reflects all of that.

DJ Times: You were a manager of a Satellite Records in Atlanta, and you’re somewhat a musical obsessive. You’ve said that when you first started DJing, you had an entire record store to choose from. Do you think today’s availability of digital music—Beatport, iTunes, Amazon, Juno—causes young DJs to be lazy in their programming?

Sunshine: No, I think that really, now more than ever, there’s no excuse to be lazy and there’s no excuse for bad programming because the access that people have to music is absurd! I spend over three hours a week on Beatport, and I spend about eight hours a week on blogs sifting through everything. I have bookmarked 400 blogs that are real legit, well-written with a kind of highbrow good taste in music. I just download massive amounts of music into iTunes and spend time on airplanes grooming it and getting through the garbage. When I’m hitting my gigs on weekends, about 75-percent of what I’m playing is brand new that week.

DJ Times: Really? That seems like a large amount of brand new tracks. Every week?

Sunshine: Yeah, and records only stick around for a month, for me. I am so over-inundated with new stuff. I get sent everything from the U.K. I don’t have enough time in my set to play the newest, coolest music. I’ve always been a big proponent of playing new music, as opposed to doing the hits. I could’ve done the hits thing years ago and I’d be in a very different place right now.

DJ Times: There are DJs whose crowds demand to hear certain tracks when they play out. What’s wrong with that?

Sunshine: Listen, I work very closely with Felix Da Housecat and there were times where we went 18 months without seeing each other, and he was playing maybe half a dozen tracks that were different from when I’d last seen him. That’s like a Broadway show. It’s perplexing to me. I make people dance to music they definitely haven’t heard before. I don’t get attached to records; I get attached to producers. I like producers like Hervé because he’s putting out 12 records a week! [laughs] I don’t lean on records for a long time. In order for me to be excited to play, I have to be putting music in front of people because I just think it’s the most important thing to do. The guys in my caliber and the ones above me definitely don’t do that. But I don’t care what’s on the charts.

DJ Times: I’m sure Josh Wink gets tired of playing “Higher State Of Consciousness,” and he only breaks that out occasionally. But when he does, the crowd goes apeshit. They love it. I know I do.

Sunshine: It’s not like I’m belligerent about it. It’s not that I’m intentionally saying, “I’m taking everyone to school tonight!” It’s just party music to me. I’m sure the majority of the tunes on my CD were new to you….what it comes down to is, if I can take the positioning after 17 years as a DJ and put brand new underground music that’s in a situation that’s not underground….the most subversive thing you can do is to take what you know from the underground and serve it up to the mainstream. A lot of people who are fiercely defensive of dance music think that anyone can make pop music. But pop music appeals to millions of people, so it’s obviously doing something right.

DJ Times: You don’t look down upon pop music, artistically?

Sunshine: All I’ve ever been really trying to do is make pop music! All I’m doing with every single project is getting closer to making mainstream pop music. I’m in the process of producing two mainstream bands. One is James Curd and the members formerly of Greenskeepers. The other one is a band from New York City called Figo. These things are not dance music—they’re bands. I’m taking all the things that are going on right now in dance music and applying what I know to their rock/pop music. I just did a bootleg of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and it’s everywhere. I put it online, and it’s been re-posted by so many people that my original post is now on page three. I took the track, the a cappella and I completely reproduced it as if I had produced the original Britney Spears song. It’s totally a dance track. I’m paving the way for a production career; I’m not just doing remixes.

DJ Times: What’s your DJ booth setup right now?

Sunshine: Two [Pioneer] CDJs and a Pioneer DJM800 [mixer]. No frills. There’s so much interesting stuff with music right now, I don’t feel like I have to scratch the records behind my back or trick them out with effects machines. I mean, you see someone like Josh Wink play and it’s genius. That’s what Wink does, but that’s not me. When I DJ, it’s about the music as it was recorded. I’m simply presenting the tracks one after another. I feel like the records should be heard the way the producer meant them to sound.

DJ Times: I take it you’re not into using vinyl-emulation systems like Serato or Traktor Scratch to DJ?

Sunshine: I don’t like laptop DJing. I think it’s really boring to watch. DJs look like they’re on MySpace and they’re not DJing. There are plenty of DJs who use laptops, but I think it’s very uninteresting to watch someone DJ like that. There’s a physicality that I like to watch someone playing vinyl, which I think can still be done watching someone play CDs. I like the digging. There’s something satisfying about digging.

DJ Times: Are you playing vinyl anymore?

Sunshine: Sadly, no. I felt like I had to make a decision about what I was gonna play. The reason I made the decision was because I was getting so much new music digitally. When you play vinyl, it sounds infinitely superior to CD. I’d play a [vinyl] record and then whatever I’d play after it on CD would sound paper thin in comparison. I’d lose traction on the dancefloor. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to have to make a call here.” The decision was to go digital all the way.

DJ Times: How did you go about selecting tracks for the compilation, Relax, This Won’t Hurt.

Sunshine: Everybody who’s on my CD, I respect deeply. As far as going deeper, farther beyond dance music, I love Brian Eno. The Coldplay record he produced is bananas. Even Daniel Lanois and what he did for U2, he’s the one saying we should do this, and Eno’s like, we should do this crazy thing.

DJ Times: I found a YouTube video where you’re disparaging trance. Isn’t all dance music somewhat formulaic?

Sunshine: Yes, but trance totally cheats because trance plays your emotions. It’s the same way a romantic comedy like a Hollywood film cheats and how they can make you cry. They force you to feel a particular emotion. Trance actually cons you into feeling a certain way. I always felt like I was led on. Of course, all dance music is formulaic, all music is formulaic unless you’re talking about free-form jazz.

DJ Times: How do you see the role of the DJ?

Sunshine: I feel like the DJ is different things to different people. People go to nightclubs for different reasons. Some people are there to see the DJ, some people aren’t. You have to be an entertainer to a certain respect. You have to be able to rock the crowd, but you can rock the crowd and be subversive about it by playing music they’ve never heard before and put really challenging sounds in front of them in the right way. It is just as important to fuck up and stand in front of a room and destroy it, as it is to rock it! Nothing makes you grow as a DJ more than losing a room. There is nothing more humbling than standing in front of an empty room that you emptied. Still, sometimes I get it wrong. You have to also know how to get from one record to the next. You have to be two records away from everybody with their hands in the air.

DJ Times: Do you have any “in-case-of-emergency” type tracks?

Sunshine: They’re always at arm’s length for me. I was playing in Asia over the weekend, and the one that got me out of jail free was the Thin White Duke’s remix of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” It’s never the same safety tracks for me. I don’t keep a Federico Franchi “Cream” track lying around—that’s just massive. When you hear DJs play that, people just get stupid. When something’s that big, you’re not even accomplishing anything anymore. I do bring old records back sometimes, like “Energy Flash” by Joey Beltram, and I’ll play it now and then—and then that goes back in the crate.

DJ Times: Isn’t it a good thing if a production is so strong it stands the test of time?

Sunshine: One of the things I think is important is, right now you have new producers, kids who are taking these old records and totally updating them. I’m playing the totally reinvented version of the song from 15 years ago. That’s where it gets really interesting for me. I don’t have to stray from the pounding dancefloor presence I like to have. I try to kick everybody’s ass as a DJ. My goal, when I walk into a club, is to give everyone a workout. I want everyone to have to go home after my set.

DJ Times: What’s your take on the state of dance music in the U.S. and abroad, right now?

Sunshine: Where I’m going right now [to A.D.E. in Amsterdam] is very inspiring. I’ve always been able to walk into Amsterdam and play just whatever. They let me play whatever I want; they’re in for the ride. Australia’s like that, too. I’m playing the Stereosonic festival in Australia with guys like DJ Hell. It’s gonna be insane.

DJ Times: You made a name for yourself as a rave DJ in the ’90s in the Midwest. Do you miss that?

Sunshine: Of course! I wish it never ended. But it’s probably good that it did, for the sake of my health [laughs].

DJ Times: What original productions are you working on at the moment?

Sunshine: I’m working on a new single for Ultra Records with Mark Palgy from the group VHS Or Beta. He did a killer bassline. I’m working with my nine-year studio partner, Mark Verbos. Then there’s another original song that Lady Tigre, from “We Like The Cars That Go Boom,” sang on. I’m also working on a collaboration with L.A. Riots under the name Brooklyn Fire. So it’ll be Brooklyn Fire versus L.A. Riots [laughs]. It’ll be like an East Coast/West Coast thing. I feel that L.A. is the epicenter of dance music right now. You have Steve Aoki and Franki Chan in L.A., and the funniest thing is that the place that seems the most behind the curve and the place that needs the most help is New York! Everybody who lives here in New York City, the DJs, have all their best gigs outside of New York. I’m a little above that crowd at Studio B [in Brooklyn]. Hipsters look at me and think I’m a dinosaur.

DJ Times: You’ve always had an eclectic approach to programming. Do you think all of the kids doing open-format DJing are late to the game?

Sunshine: I’ve heard people mix that kinda music and kill it. Z-Trip is a genius. I think what he does is untouchable. At the same time, I’ve seen people not mix and play unbelievable sets of music. I just went to David Mancuso’s loft party, and he doesn’t mix anything, and he played one of the best sets of all time! It’s all about programming. If you can build on a sound, you don’t have to mix. With Mancuso, he did mix at one point, but he made a deliberate choice. He plays a record and at the end of each record, people clap! There were little kids there who were eight-years-old. Those parties haven’t changed at all since the ’70s.

DJ Times: Have you ever been to Ibiza? There are little kids running around Café Mambo at sunset, and less than 20 feet away from the DJs. Dance music is everywhere, not only in the pickup joints where guys go to meet girls and party.

Sunshine: I’ve never been, but I’m approaching that. I think that’s coming this summer. The whole thing with America is, America’s hung up on all the wrong things. Like the Janet Jackson nipple thing was the biggest thing here. Whereas in every other country, even cold cream commercials have a bare nipple and nobody cares.

DJ Times: You’ve had your music used in TV, film, video games and fashion events. Do you consciously seek outlets beyond clubland?

Sunshine: I just did the music for the “Dance Dance Revolution” video game in Japan. I did three covers and remixed the theme song—there are now 10-year-old kids dancing to my music in Osaka! That company came to me. They heard my other Ultra mix CD [Ultra.Rock Remixed], and they said, “This is what we want!” That opportunity came strictly from Ultra. You never know how far this stuff goes.

DJ Times: I’ve seen a YouTube video of you where you’re kind of bashing today’s youth. What would you say to young people today?

Sunshine: I think they better get their fat asses off the Internet! The Internet’s really good for certain things and you have everything in the world with the Internet. I think the Internet’s become a problem really fast, though. I think people spend too much time writing on each other’s fun wall that they’ve forgotten about the world that exists outside their bedroom! It’s the reason people aren’t going out as much anymore, but we’re standing in front of a big, paradigm shift.

DJ Times: What was the first thing you did when Obama won the presidency?

Sunshine: I took a deep breath for the first time in eight years! I think people are gonna be happy to live again, and it’ll feel like they’re a part of something.

DJ Times: What’s your studio setup?

Sunshine: Everything’s at Mark’s place. It’s got tons of old, analog gear. We do everything in Pro Tools—it’s definitely our choice for putting things together. It’s a combination of a lot of analog trickery and a lot of modular synths, and using a lot of digital plug-ins to tear things apart.

DJ Times: You’re also a songwriter. How does that inform your DJing?

Sunshine: I sit and write songs on a keyboard, but I wouldn’t wanna play songs in front of an audience. I’d never play onstage to perform. I like the idea of being a producer. I like the idea of being in the shadows. I’ve had plenty of time in the spotlight as the DJ, as the guy who ran the record store. I’m very happy at 37-years-old and I can take a step back and be in the shadows and be in the corner. Now I’m happy and I’ve found the love of my life. I’m also sober. Being in the spotlight makes problems with me because people get bummed when I don’t wanna be on the bender. It puts me in a lot of peculiar situations, especially when I tour. Is it too much to understand that the DJing is the best part of the night for me?