Australia native Tommy Trash might not yet be a household name for the average casual dance music fan -- but give it time. The producer/DJ is currently only part of the way into his first headlining tour, ever, but he's already got the support of some of the highest-powered names in the big-room industry. On the strength of banging, peak-hour tracks like "Cascade" and "The End," Trash has scored fans in everyone from Swedish House Mafia -- whose "Antidote" he remixed to great acclaim -- to Tiesto, David Guetta, Deadmau5, and Laidback Luke.
He didn't always love electronic music, though -- in fact, he outright hated it, preferring rock and the classical music in which he formally trained. "I come from a small country town in Queensland, Australia called Bunderburg," he says "My idea of dance music back then was the really awful, commercial top 40 dance music, like 'What Is Love?' Back then as well we didn't have Internet, so I didn't really know what was going on until I went to uni in Brisbane. That opened up a whole new world."
Friends shepherded Tommy along to house music clubs, where he was instantly taken by the possibilities of building atop a four-four beat. "I'm a piano player, so the synthesizers were a natural step forward for me, I thought. I loved that anything was possible on them," he recalls. "Piano was a quite beautiful instrument, but quite rigid -- you can't change a piano sound. A piano is a piano. But on a synthesizer you can sculpt a limitless amount of sounds. For me, that set my imagination off."
In the ensuing years, he eventually arrived at the Tommy Trash sound -- unapologetically loud, pounding, and brash, ripe with bass drops and sing-along melodic changes. This is freak-out stuff that will go down well in a booming field at Ultra Music Festival, where he takes the main stage on Friday playing a set of virtually all of his own original music. "I just love tracks that are big in all senses -- almost rude and arrogant," he says. "That's just my vibe, I guess! I just love the energy, and dropping that in a set and watching how kids go absolutely nuts to it."
Tommy Trash. Friday, March 23 at Ultra Music Festival. Bayfront Park, 301 N. Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Sold out. Click here.
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