KATOI made in bermondsey
Recent projects I have worked on include ‘Kerwhizz’ for CBeebies, ‘Wolf Blood’ for CBBC, ‘Just William’ for BBC1 and Big Brother for Channel 4 and my own show, Yoshimi & Katoi’s ‘Strange Hill High’ has recently been picked up by CBBC to fill BBC1’s prestigious Grange Hill slot.
But that is now... and this, was then...
Inspired by the early TV advertising work of directors such as Ridley Scott & Alan Parker, at 15 my career started making tea inside one of London’s top advertising agencies, where I ended in the creative department working on campaigns for brands such as Honda and Philips.
ACT 1
After university I ran away with the circus (OK, it was really just a band) and toured the UK and Europe before setting up a recording studio in deepest Surrey.
Despite its relatively parochial location, the studio attracted everyone from Edwin Starr to Dannii Minogue and John Culshaw to The Monkees, and for about a decade I worked closely alongside Brian ‘Xenomania’ Higgins (Cher, Girls Aloud) on tracks which would eventually find their way to multi platinum selling status.
After moving into PWL’s Hit Factory building in London, I was signed as an independent producer to Sony/BMG and have had a handful of UK club chart No1s, have remixed for artists such as Blondie, Gloria Estefan, Kenickie & Moloko and worked on TV and film soundtracks including Peter Gabriel’s Rabbit Proof Fence.
ACT 2 - THE WANDERER
After university I ran away with the circus (OK, it was really just a band) and toured the UK and Europe before setting up a recording studio in deepest Surrey.
Despite its relatively parochial location, the studio attracted everyone from Edwin Starr to Dannii Minogue and John Culshaw to The Monkees, and for about a decade I worked closely alongside Brian ‘Xenomania’ Higgins (Cher, Girls Aloud) on tracks which would eventually find their way to multi platinum selling status.
After moving into PWL’s Hit Factory building in London, I was signed as an independent producer to Sony/BMG and have had a handful of UK club chart No1s, have remixed for artists such as Blondie, Gloria Estefan, Kenickie & Moloko and worked on TV and film soundtracks including Peter Gabriel’s Rabbit Proof Fence.
I remixed Blondie’s Atomic for CocaCola’s 1998 world cup campaign and I once appeared stark naked on MTV every day for 3 weeks without a single complaint. I recorded the first ever demo of Cher’s ‘Believe’ and was responsible for the remix that Wikipedia says ended Lauren Laverne’s music career. I was a professional DJ in both the 1980s and in 2000s and I managed the regeneration and restructuring of Pete Waterman’s PWL Hit Factory building in 2001. My first ever job as a live sound engineer was with a 120,000 watt sound system in-front of a stadium full of 48,000 Norwegians... after I lied about ‘having some experience’ only the day before... but I digress...
In 2003 I decided it was time to return to my childhood dream of becoming a film director, and having won the inaugural Nokia Shorts film award, I went on to produce and direct a string of MTV chart topping Music videos and TV spots for international telecoms companies such as Jamster and iTouch.
In 2007 I remortgaged my house to develop a unique ‘realtime’ cinematic animation technique called Hypervynorama (think Aardman meets Team America) and started work creating an adult Tarantinoesq show called Yo! Funkytown. In 2009 this gained me representation from both the Wachowski Brother management in LA and Ricky Gervais’ agent in the UK, who described Yo! Funkytown as ‘the next South Park’.
ACT 3
But enough of the history lessons... welcome to my future...