Tommie Sunshine

DJ, producer, and songwriter Tommie Sunshine links dance, rock, pop, and fashion circles through his distinctive projects. Club versions of tracks by household names such as Katy Perry, Fallout Boy, and Elvis Presley have come from his studio, while festival stages devoted to EDM and runway events have featured him as a headliner. His broad command of music history together with candid opinions has secured appearances across talk formats and radio broadcasts. After gaining recognition in the American rave community throughout the 1990s, he emerged as a prominent voice in the electroclash wave of the early 2000s and helped lay groundwork for the EDM surge of the following decade. Selections of his reworkings for acts including Panic! At the Disco and Gang of Four appear on the 2007 collection Ultra.Rock Remixed, and original material has surfaced on his Xylophone Jones and Brooklyn Fire imprints as well as on Heldeep and Armada.

Born Thomas Lorello, he spent his formative years near Chicago and began frequenting house venues during the 1980s. A trip to New York City that included attendance at the final Frankie Bones Storm Raves in the early 1990s prompted him to start spinning at Midwest events. Several years followed in Georgia, where he operated the Atlanta shop Satellite Records and held a pair of club residencies, before he returned to Chicago and launched the nights ElectroSweat and Degeneration. At the height of electroclash he supplied remixes for Fischerspooner and the Faint, co-wrote the Felix da Housecat single “Silver Screen-Shower Scene,” and contributed to DJ Hell’s 2003 album NY Muscle. From his Brooklyn base he issued the first original single, “Dance Among the Ruins,” on Xylophone Jones in 2004. His debut mix CD arrived as Systematic Sessions, Vol. 2 (with Marc Romboy) in 2006 and showcased twitchy electro and tech-house; the following year Ultra.Rock Remixed marked his initial Ultra Records outing. The 2008 set Relax, This Won’t Hurt gathered tracks and reworkings by Diplo, Boys Noize, and Crookers that captured the leading edge of contemporary electro-house. He also supplied music for Konami’s 2008 Dance Dance Revolution title DDRX and later entries in the series.

Early in the 2010s he founded Brooklyn Fire and put out electro-house material alongside Bart B More and Disco Fries as well as vocalists Tiffany Roth and Kid Sister. Festival bills at Electric Daisy Carnival and Ultra Music Festival, plus dates alongside Afrojack, Skrillex, and Zedd, reflected EDM’s mainstream ascent during that decade. Mid-decade singles carried co-production credits from Fast Eddie and DJ Funk, underscoring his Midwest heritage, while additional partnerships involved the veteran Dutch duo Chocolate Puma and younger talents such as Krunk! and Funky Craig.