Sonny Fodera

Adelaide, a Derrick Carter set, and a very long apprenticeship

Sonny Fodera was born in Adelaide on 10 November 1985 and started out making hip-hop beats in his mid-teens. The switch came at eighteen, after watching the Chicago DJ Derrick Carter play a local club — a set that redirected him towards house and, eventually, out of South Australia altogether. By twenty-three he was touring the United States and the United Kingdom; he has been based in London for years now.

He is blunt about the shape of the career. "I've never had that overnight success," he told House of Solo around the release of his sixth album. "This is my sixth album, and I've been at it for a long time. But I still love it just as much." He describes Britain rather than Australia as the place the work actually began: "The UK has amazing people, and dance music is such a big part of the culture here… the UK, for me, feels like where I started, and it feels like home now."

Chicago labels, Defected, and a label of his own

The early records went where the influence pointed. Moving Forward (2013) and After Parties & Aeroplanes (2014) both came out on Cajual, the Chicago house label, which is an unusual pair of calling cards for an Australian in his twenties. Frequently Flying followed on Defected in 2016, the year he reached number two on Beatport's club DJ chart for the UK and Europe.

In early 2017 he launched Solotoko and put out "Set Me Free" through it. The label has carried almost everything since, including the albums Rise (2019) and Wide Awake (2021), and it remains the home for his own releases rather than a major — a detail that matters when reading the chart numbers that came later. Solotoko also runs a long-standing radio mix series under his name.

The first crossover moment arrived in 2019 with "One Night", a collaboration with MK that peaked at number 51 in the UK and went gold there. It was a modest chart placing attached to a record that stayed in DJ bags for years, which is roughly how the rest of his catalogue has behaved.

The vocal-house run that moved the numbers

The step up came through singles built around named vocalists rather than through albums. "Asking", with Clementine Douglas, appeared in July 2023. "Somedays", made with Jazzy and D.O.D., reached number five in the UK and has been certified three times platinum by ARIA. "Think About Us", with D.O.D. and Poppy Baskcomb, hit number 18 in the UK and number one in New Zealand. "Tell Me" won the APRA award for Most Performed Dance or Electronic Work.

That run brought him ARIA nominations for "Somedays" and a BRIT Award nomination — a strange sort of recognition for a producer who had been releasing house records for over a decade before most radio playlists noticed. His account of the method is unglamorous: "I like to release every track as if it is a single."

The collaborator list has widened accordingly, taking in Dom Dolla, MK, Calvin Harris, Diplo, Glass Animals and Ella Eyre. "I collaborate with so many people, and I think it is such a good thing to do in music," he said. "It brings more sounds, different people's stories and different creativity."

Eighteen tracks, five years

can we do it all again? arrived on 12 June 2026 on Solotoko: 18 tracks, 59 minutes, and nine singles released ahead of it, running from "Asking" in 2023 through to "Feel Again" in June 2026. "It's my sixth album now, and I like to release every track as if it is a single, so it has taken five years to get them all together to this point," he said.

The record moves across styles without leaving house behind — "Let Me Be in Your Arms" with the Cameroonian singer Libianca, the Afro-house lean of "Look", the deep-house weight of "Asking", the harder push of "Mind Still". Chrystal, Clementine Douglas and D.O.D. also appear, and Burns, MK, Stuart Crichton and Billen Ted contributed production. Fodera's stated aim was for it to play like a DJ set rather than a track listing.

It reached number 20 on the UK albums chart and number two on the UK dance chart, with number 49 in Australia and number seven on the Irish independent chart. His own tour announcement billed it as the highest-charting album by an Australian artist in 2026, with the album's tracks approaching a billion combined streams. Reviews were warm rather than reverent: Joe Muggs, writing for The Arts Desk, noted "pianos and big vocals galore, rippling bits of trance synth that give it an airborne feel" and melodies that are "relentlessly hook-hook-hook-hook", while a Stereoboard review reached for a comparison with Calvin Harris — both producers having worked out how to turn house into crossover pop without abandoning the dancefloor entirely.

Standing, September 2026

The single most-cited fact about Fodera right now is the one he cites himself: he sold out Co-op Live in Manchester in 2025, the first DJ to fill the 23,000-capacity room, with more than 20,000 people in on the night. That headline run also took in sold-out arena shows in Glasgow and Cardiff, alongside festival sets at Tomorrowland, Longitude and Creamfields and an 18-week Pacha Ibiza residency. "The atmosphere was amazing, and to see everyone dancing, even in their seats, was something I will never forget," he said afterwards.

The Ibiza residency then roughly doubled. Mondays at Pacha ran 22 weeks in 2026, from 11 May to 5 October, in the club's main room, with Danny Howard booked on 18 of the 22 dates and guests including Armand Van Helden, Fatboy Slim, Roger Sanchez, Eats Everything, Jayda G, A-Trak, Lost Frequencies, TSHA, D.O.D., Dombresky and Jazzy. Pacha was the first club he visited on the island; he has previously held slots at Amnesia and Ibiza Rocks. Ibiza Spotlight, which called the night one of Pacha's biggest successes, noted that it holds "accessibility with credibility" and is one of the rare parties where women on the dancefloor outnumber men. He added a one-off daytime party at Destino Five on Saturday 1 August 2026, 5pm to 11pm, during the BBC Radio 1 Ibiza weekend, with Roger Sanchez, Saffron Stone and Franky Wah back to back with Howard.

On Sunday 30 August 2026 he closed the Arc Stage at Creamfields, on a day that also carried Armand Van Helden, Becky Hill, Gorgon City, Prospa and Fatboy Slim, and on which thunderstorms forced several acts to pause mid-set. His single with Becky Hill, "Say Something", came out that month; the pair had previously charted at number 23 with "Never Be Alone".

The diary from here is short and specific. A date at FIVE LUXE JBR in Dubai on 10 October 2026 precedes the Australian run: Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on 15 October, PICA in Melbourne on 16 October, the Ice Cream Factory in Perth on 17 October and the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on 24 October, with tickets having gone on general sale on 6 May 2026. LIV in Miami Beach follows on 12 December. Then comes the first arena tour under his own name: Utilita Arena Newcastle on 19 March 2027, the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on 20 March, Co-op Live on 26 March and The O2 on 27 March. "I'll be returning to… Co-op Live after selling it out last time, as well as playing my own show at the O2 Arena for the very first time," he said of it.

What the sets are built to do

Fodera's own framing of the album — that it should play like a DJ set — describes his live approach in reverse. The sets are DJ sets, not live bands, and they are organised around recognition: the vocal singles arrive as anchors, with edits and unreleased material filling the space between them. Ibiza Spotlight's description of the Pacha night as a run of "surprise edits, Shazam-worthy drops, and hands-in-the-air moments" is a fair summary of the mechanics.

The one live element that is consistent is the vocalists. Clementine Douglas, Jazzy and Poppy Baskcomb — the voices on the records — appear in person across the residency dates, turning individual tracks into short performances inside an otherwise continuous mix. It is the piece that separates a Fodera show from a straightforward club booking, and the reason the arena rooms work at all.