Now Fodera is forming his own label, AARIVAL, with an inaugural release planned for next month.Īt some point during his cross-continental bouncing, he made a positive impression on Gene Farris, a Chicago producer who asked him to remix his track "Dance Warriors" for Cajual. "Caught Up" features vocals from Yasmeen, who has contributed to tracks from house pillars like Todd Terry and Sandy Rivera, and it arrived on the English label Defected, a force in the crossover wing of house music for more than a decade. instead, he climbed slowly but surely, connecting with some of the genre's big names on the way, earning plaudits from longstanding gatekeepers.įodera has released a pair of albums on Cajual, the label of Chicago pioneer Curtis Jones, better known to dancers as either Cajmere or Green Velvet, and worked with Chicago staples like Dajae and Gene Farris. He didn't blow up seemingly overnight, with a hit that sweeps across clubs - or Spotify - from Europe to the U.S. Then he returned to America for this week's Winter Music Conference in Miami.įodera has risen through the house music ranks the old fashioned way. The 31-year-old headed back across the Atlantic to be present at a baby shower for his fiancé, who is expecting a child. tour that included stops in New York City, San Diego, and Orlando. He is speaking from London, at home after a short U.S. "I still remember playing the bassline, like, man, this is sick!" Fodera tells Billboard Dance. "Caught Up," the latest single from the producer Sonny Fodera, belongs to an important strain of motion-commanding house music - songs along the lines of Marshall Jefferson's "Move Your Body," Nightcrawlers' "Push The Feeling On," and Barbara Tucker's "I Get Lifted." The primary lyric in Fodera's tune is "caught up in the rhythm," and when this is looped and laid across a grid of ping-pong-ing bass and unyielding, high-stepping drums, the phrase transforms into a set of dancefloor marching orders.