Funkefeller

History

Daniel Douglas Orlando began his music career at the age of 4 years old. His father, Douglas Orlando, gave him piano lessons for many years. As a child, he was very hyperactive, so sitting through the piano lessons was difficult for him. Nonetheless, Orlando enjoyed most of his days growing up playing in his father’s music studio. His favorite gear to play on was the ARP 2600, programmable Yamaha DX7, 1957 Fender Rhodes, among other keyboards and gear. He also enjoyed playing with his father’s 4-track cassette recorder where he and his father would record him singing and playing the piano. At age 8, Orlando remembers spending much of his time playing around with sounds on the DX7 and recording on the Commodore 64 in Cakewalk Pro Audio 8. Once he was 12 years old, Orlando became interested in other instruments. This is when he picked up his first guitar, a Fender Squier. For the next 10 years of his life, he would sit in his bedroom day after day practicing and learning every song imaginable. He never took lessons, but rather taught himself how to play. He figured out how to play songs simply by listening to them, where he would be able to hear the track and play it back, a talent that he attributes to his Father. Orlando’s first band, Oblisque, was formed when he was 14 years old. In this band, he played the guitar and sometimes the bass, but later moved on to do the vocals exclusively with the band. The band was hard rock and heavy metal, spending most of their time playing music by Rage Against The Machine, The Deftones, Korn, Metallica, and Pantera. Oblisque played mostly at parties around the northwest suburbs of Chicago because they were too young still to play at night clubs and bars. Soon, Orlando took his music to a whole new level when he formed the band Fixation 29 with a very talented drummer he met named Corky Via. Their musical talents and high-strung Italian personalities made them click almost immediately. For a while, the band was composed solely of these two artists, but soon two more members joined the group. Dennis Quijano played the bass and Paul Postelnik was the lead guitarist. Orlando was the vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the group, and wrote most of the music. After the band was together for about a year, Orlando’s father introduced the group to Michael Angelo Batio, owner of record label M.A.C.E Music. Batio thought Fixation 29 was a very talented band so they were brought into the studio where they recorded their first EP. Fixation 29 began playing many shows and opening up for artists such as The Bloodhound Gang. Fixation 29’s fame skyrocketed right around the same time that he was graduating high school. When it was time for the band to go on tour, Orlando ended up having to choose between going to college or going on tour. The band meant a lot to him, but he knew that he needed to go to college.

Orlando was devastated by the breakup of Fixation 29 and drowning himself in his own music was his way of coping with it. He spent every waking moment of his years. He took many music courses in college, but during this time of focusing intensely on his production skills, he took them to a whole new extreme. He attended a community college his first year, and would sometimes go 4 days straight with no sleep in his father’s studio producing music. During this time, he produced many different genres such as metal, pop, alternative and electronic music.

When Orlando left home to attend Illinois State University, others would be dissecting frogs and learning the periodic table while he would be sitting as his desk with a book of blank staff paper writing music scores for a multitude of instruments. He knew he wanted to be part of the Digital Arts Technology program at Illinois State University, but knew it was extremely hard to get into. Musical and technical skills were a must because the program was still being developed and the students who admitted into the program were required to assist the instructors in developing their course curriculum. He applied for the program and was accepted immediately. Orlando enjoyed working so closely with the prestigious Professors that came from the well-respected departments of Theatre, Art, and Music at Illinois State University.

Every March, there was a dance competition between the fraternities and the sororities called March Madness, which was one of the biggest events at the University. His first year, Orlando put together the dance numbers for the first and second-place winners for the sororities. On the fraternity side, Orlando constructed the dance number for his fraternity, the Theta Rho chapter of Sigma Chi, who went on to win second place at the event. It is no surprise then, that his following two years, he was constructing a large majority of the music numbers for the event, which sometimes reached as many as 20,000 attendees. This was a big accomplishment for him and was the beginning of his focus on electronic dance music. Orlando was a DJ for a number of large underground parties during this time. During his Junior year, he became a DJ for the local radio station, WZND Normal-Bloomington. After Orlando graduated from Illinois State University in 2003, he moved to Arizona to follow his family who had recently moved as the result of his father's job relocation.

Once Orlando had relocated to Arizona, he got into small business entrepreneurship and software programming. He began teaching himself various computer programming languages and started a web application development company called Vision Media Group with his partner Jeff Sandrini, whom he met at a conference in California. During this time, he had taken a break from music to focus on branding himself as an expert in the field of Information Technology and Software Development. After a few years of this, he found himself drawn back to making music when building computers and programming software started to become less interesting to him. There was a lot of stress and intensity involved with his work running software and web development companies, so he knew that getting back into his musical passion would help to relieve some of that stress. His life as a software programmer began to take off around this time however, so he moved into a large two bedroom apartment and transformed one of the bedrooms into a professional acoustically treated recording studio. He started buying an immense amount of gear for the studio and soon after decided to start a record label called Sonic Masterworks.

Orlando was educated enough about the music industry to start a record label and knew that at this point in his life, it was the logical thing to do. He wanted all of his music that he produced to run on his record label where it would be protected. Having other artists on this record label is very important to Orlando and he continues to strive to build a big label. The logo for Sonic Masterworks was created by Jeff Sandrini and almost all of the ideas for the company were populated within a short 2 hour time-span. Artists that currently have tracks signed to Sonic Masterworks include but are not limited to Funkefeller, Spy VZ Spy, Silent J, Constantine, Switchup, Jason Camiolo, Steph, DJ A-Ros and Miss Krystle. Orlando and Sandrini spent multiple days going through various potential artist names. Orlando wanted his artist name to be somewhat symbolic of Chicago and soon he and Sandrini of Rockefeller Center. Orlando read John D. Rockefeller’s life story and knew that Rockefeller was someone that Orlando aspired to be like for the contributions that John D. Rockefeller made during his life. Orlando felt that Rockefeller represented something very significant for him. He put his own spin on the name by replacing “Rock” with “Funk”, which identified with his funky style of electronic music that he was creating. “The name Funkefeller just feels like me,” Orlando stated in an interview that was conducted. Funkefeller released his first album entitled “FUNKED UP” on his birthday, May 29, 2010 and his second album entitled “Filthy” was released on Sandrini’s birthday, September 11, 2010. The tracks from these two albums were retracted once Sonic Masterworks signed a distribution deal with Acuna Digital, to be released later under a second alias that Orlando would develop, named Switchup. He had also released two singles, “Bounce” and “Rock This”, which also got retracted. The SUPER TOXIC EP was Funkefeller’s first official release on Sonic Masterworks that was distributed by Acuna Digital and sold all around the world. THE UNKNOWN, a three track single was released soon after, which features vocals by Steph and a remix produced by Jason Camiolo. The mad scientist identity came into place right around the same time as the creation of SUPER TOXIC. When Funkefeller came across a drawing of a mad scientist, it triggered his memories of people who had often referred to him as a computer scientist. He felt that the mad scientist identity fit him well as he is very eccentric, off-the-wall, and not your typical computer scientist. When in the studio, Orlando comes up with crazy creations, almost like being in an actual science lab. His sister, the marketing communications manager at Sonic Masterworks, helped him to build the identity and branding Funkefeller. Orlando created the Funkefeller logo together with Jeff Sandrini once his identity had been created.

Studio albums

Funked Up (2010)

Filthy (2010)

EPs

Super Toxic (2011)

- "Super Toxic" - "Live For The Music" - "For The Hardcore" - "Bounce" - "Bounce" (Jason Camiolo Mix)

Singles

"The Unknown" feat. Steph (2011)

"The Unknown" feat. Steph (Dirty Version) (2011)

"The Unknown" feat. Steph (Jason Camiolo Mix) (2011)

DJ Mixes

Funkefeller’s March Madness 2011 Mix (2011)

Funkefeller's Birthday LIVE set @ "Jason's Beach House" Event (2011)

Funkefeller May Podcast (2011)

Remixes & Mashups

Black Eyed Peas – “Just Can’t Get Enough” (2011)

Axwell, Tai, Afrojack – “House Music / Paradise Poltergeist / Satisfaction” (2011)

Ke$ha – “We R Who We R” (2011)

Martin Solveig feat Dada Life – “Hello” (2011)

12th Planet – “Needed Change” feat. Skrillex & Foreign Beggars (2011)

Deadmau5, MosDam, Robbie Rivera, Funkefeller – “Sofi Needs a Mashup” (2011)

Feed Me vs Funkefeller – “Blood Red / Live for the Music” (2011)

Liquid Stranger – “Bully” (2010)

Deadmau5 – “One Trick Pony” (2010)

Deadmau5 – “Cthulhu Sleeps” (2010)

Skrillex – “Kill Everybody” (2010)

Skrillex – “Rock N’ Roll” (2010)

Skrillex – “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” (2010)

Deadmau5 – “Sofi Needs a Ladder” (2010)

Afrojack – “Bangduck/Pokadots” (2010)

Steve Aoki – “In The House” feat. Zuper Blahq (2010)

Robbie Rivera, David Guetta, Boys Noize, Angger Dimas – “Electro Medley” (2010)

Deadmau5 – “Ghosts and Stuff” (2010)

Nelly Furtado feat. Flo Rida – “Promiscuous” (2010)

New Boyz – “You’re a Jerk” (2010)

Kanye West – “Love Lockdown” (2010)

David Guetta feat. Chris Willis, Fergie, LMFAO – “No Getting Over You” (2010)

Flo Rida feat. Nelly Furtado – “Jump!” (2010)

Alex Kidd vs Funkefeller – “Big Bada Boom / Hunting for Cheese” (2010)

Roxy Cottontail & Larry Tee – “Let’s Make Nasty” (2010)

Deadmau5, Orlando Voorn, Funkefeller – “Paco Di Bango / Some Chords” (2010)

Morgan Page feat. Rusko – “Empty Girls” (2010)