Masanori Morita
Twenty-five years of Japanese house music, most of it spent outside Japan.
STUDIO APARTMENT started in Tokyo in 2000. What it became was unusual for a Japanese artist: a catalogue that travelled. Defected picked up the records. So did King Street Sounds in New York, Nervous, Toolroom, Purple Music, and later Stil Vor Talent and Armada. Nine albums and more than three hundred original tracks, most of them released outside the country they were made in.
The turn came in 2008. “I’m In Love”, with Ron Carroll on vocals, finished the year at No.1 on Beatport’s Deep House chart and took Best Deep House Track the year after. What followed was a run of records built the same way, around singers rather than drops: Monique Bingham, Barbara Tucker, Joi Cardwell, Kenny Bobien, Blaze, Mr. V. Multiple Traxsource No.1s came out of that run.
Then Ibiza, part of his summers since 2008. He has worked the main room at Pacha and held a residency at Privilege, the largest club on the island. Amsterdam Dance Event and Winter Music Conference became annual. A Summer Story in Madrid put him on a bill with Carl Cox, Fisher and Loco Dice.
The second act
In 2019 he set up N.E.O.N and started again. Two years later “Sun Ra Was Right”, with Monique Bingham, held No.1 on Traxsource’s Afro House chart for three consecutive weeks and closed the year at No.9 across the whole genre. A generation of DJs who had never heard the 2008 records found the name through that one.
The bookings changed with it. WOMB in Shibuya has been home ground for over a decade, and the nights there put him next to Peggy Gou, Artbat, Joseph Capriati, Louie Vega, Kevin de Vries and Patrice Baumel. In January 2025 he played Afterlife at Cenote Zamna in Tulum.
Behind the records
He has run his own labels since 2006. Apt. and Apt. International debuted DAISHI DANCE and PAX JAPONICA GROOVE, and brought Dennis Ferrer, Kerri Chandler and Jerome Sydenham into Japan at a point when almost none of that music reached the country officially.
Under his own name he has produced, remixed and written across the Japanese mainstream. His remix of KIMAGUREN’s “LIFE” passed two million downloads. For five summers from 2008 he staged WORLD MUSeUM at ageHa, playing house music live with a band of more than forty musicians.
The sunglasses are not styling. STUDIO APARTMENT and OLIVER PEOPLES released the SAOP frame worldwide in 2009, and a second model in 2011.