We sit down with Timathi to celebrate his latest release ‘Celestial’ on Tinnit alongside Tabia. We learn more of Timathi’s influences, his take on the Afrohouse genre, his studio and more…
Hey Timathi, tell us about how you first got into electronic music – what parties, djs, labels etc excited you?
I started clubbing in the early 90s in London in the underground rave scene, when acid house had branched off into harder sounds in the main dancefloors and the back rooms would play more edgy house and disco.
What drew you to Afrohouse? What defines the genre?
From an early age I played many instruments, and after discovering clubbing I wanted to understand what a DJ was really doing. Without YouTube and any friends that had decks I self taught myself vinyl mixing painstakingly over a few years. For many years of collecting a vast vinyl collection of house music, it was always the tracks with tribal rhythms that worked for me on dancefloors, I had also amassed a large collection of soulful house. For me this culminates in what is afrohouse today, a sound full of rhythm and feeling. It was in 2014 at an Innervisions party at ADE when I heard Culoe De Song’s ‘YOUD’ come shaking through the soundsystem of Trouw that made me fall in love with what we now call ‘afro tech’.
How do you add your own spin to it?
Afrohouse has a range of sounds if you search for this as a genre, but its the deep techno elements that I like to add, also the melodies, giving it an almost trancey feel, which takes me back to my 90’s roots.
You live between Dubai and Mykonos – do you make and play different sounds when you are in each of those places?
A good DJ learns how to adapt, ive been DJ’ing all my adult life, and I love it, but with over the last 18 months since I’ve focused on production I make sure my sets fit around the sound I’m producing, and of course showcasing the new releases. Fortunately the reaction I get in both these locations is working, Afrohouse seems to be the most popular sound right now.
What inspired your new single on Tinnit Music?
There’s a plethora of artists that inspire me, but I wanted to create an original track here, something for the late night dark big rooms, something similar to what I heard Culoe had produced back in 2014.
How did you hook up with Tabia and why?
I’d loved her tracks and at the time of reaching out to her the track with Maxi Meraki had just started to chart, it was all a perfect storm.
Who did what on the tune? Did you each do certain bits?
I’d laid down a stripped back version of this track with the beat and synth lines, sent it over to Tabia to see what she could come up with for a melody and lyrics. We worked remotely on this and Tabia just ran with it adlib style producing a really long clip, I then cut this back to the sections I thought worked over the track, and then got to work on the final arrangement.
What would you say is your essential track at the moment?
Manoos mix of ‘After Saturday Night’ with the lush vocals from ‘Starving yet full’, stay tuned for my next release with Cedric from Starving yet full, who was part of ‘Azarii & III’ with the hit ‘hungry for the power’.
What other music do you listen to outside of the electronic spectrum?
I’m classically trained as a pianist and also played trumpet and sang as a child, my playlist is never the same.
What do you like to do to relax outside of the studio / DJ booth?
I love outdoor sports and the adrenaline rush of extreme sports, last week I was in Romania snowboarding in -11 and this week I’m in Dubai kitesurfing in +23. I love to travel, but I love to keep active, that keeps my mind fresh, and gives me the energy and inspiration to keep creating.
What is your studio set up like?
I use Ableton as my DAW, an Apollo Quad drives everything, I have a couple of hardware synths, but im using mostly plugins with Omnisphere being my favorite and that works perfectly with the Roland SE02. I have Genelecs for monitoring, but I send everything for master, even pre-release just to be sure the mix down is right for playing out.
What else have you got coming up?
I’m working every day on new tracks, I have a library of un-released tracks, a big one with Idd Aziz and another nice one with Nes Mburu, 2024 is the year I focus on which labels to place them.
What are your hopes for 2024 and beyond?
Currently I’m booking 3 artists a week in Dubai, so im busy managing those bookings and taking care of them at the gigs. Over the summer I’ll be back in Europe and working on launching a series of events showcasing the finest talent from the Afrohouse scene.