Sonny Daze Seizes the Moment

By Michael Jackson I Dec. 16, 2025

“I have a small label, I’d like to make some music with you,” is how producer/DJ Sonny Daze introduced himself to saxophonist Isaiah Collier. *Cosmic Transitions*, their first project together on Daze’s Division 81 Records, was a hit.
(Photo: Michael Jackson)

Sonny Daze dubbed Division 81 after a thoroughfare in his home town of Chicago. His favorite record shop, Dusty Groove, is located on Ashland Avenue, but Division Street had a better ring to it, Daze explained when DownBeat met him to revisit some old haunts.

Eloquent and debonair, Daze grew up in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, adjoining “Terror Town,” where life was precarious. When he moved with his mother to Logan Square on the city’s North Side, it was “hell to heaven,” said the producer and DJ, who finally felt free to roam the neighborhood and interact with the community. As a pre-teen in his new home, he’d rig a speaker into an open window. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna play music for the people.’ I was already messing with the EQ, turning up the highs, cutting the midrange.”

He favors bold volume, bringing the vibe, scaring off the old folk. But he’s open to dynamic extremes. Check I Am Beyond with Isaiah Collier and Michael Ode, with surprise guest shaman Jimmy Chan barely audible at first conjurings.

This interest in impactful sound stems from memories of his youth, riding in his defacto Uncle Paris’ Cadillac, pimped out with a bombastic stereo. “The music would be on 10, clean, no rattling, full of bass and clarity,” Daze recollected. Later in life, he slipped an Earth Wind & Fire cassette into Paris’ casket when he died at age 42, a tribute to those sonic sojourns.

Early on it was The Fat Boys, plus MJ’s Off The Wall, Anita Baker’s Caught Up In The Rapture and Sade’s Diamond Life, then John Coltrane, that beguiled him. He’d bike ride to Gramophone Records on Clark Street copping Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Jamiroquai or The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick. Def Jam impresario Russell Simmons inspired Daze’s perceived trajectory; so did Rick Rubin. “Atlantic, Motown, Quincy Jones … but Rubin’s sherpa-like energy, his concept of a recording as a thought process …” riffed Daze. “I’ve got a ways to go, in all directions, but each project is an opportunity to grow.”

While studying at Columbia College Chicago in the early 2000s, Daze interned at Columbia Records in New York. There were cool moments and cool people, but disenchantment with major label priorities. “Certain artists’ careers were disassembled because the industry played safe. I remember Bilal’s ‘Soul Sista’ single was big. We had the promo, and I was excited. I’m an appreciator of music, I don’t say a fanatic, don’t wanna be fanatical. They wanted some famous producer on an additional single, waited six months by which time the buzz had gone.”

Such procrastination and product manipulation was exasperating. “That was a lesson. When it’s time to put music out, seize the moment.”

Daze practiced what he preached when he connected with saxophonist Isaiah Collier. “I was at the Whistler in Chicago hanging with (International Anthem’s) Alejandro Ayala, didn’t even know who was playing. Freshly laid off as assistant to the president of a local union, it was the dead of winter, right before the pandemic. I had my back to the stage, then heard this sound. It was the same with ‘Rock With You,’ Earth, Wind and Fire or being magnetized by Coltrane — this was it!”

Between sets Sonny walked up to Collier: “I have a small label, I’d like to make some music with you.” That serendipity quickly yielded Cosmic Transitions (2021), recorded at the storied Van Gelder Studio. Collier’s sincere, driven message channelled Coltrane. Daze describes the music as “wild, viewed in the world as chaotic, but a focused energy, sent to sage the place up, cleanse the world.”

Daze chose Trane’s birthday for the session, on the autumnal equinox, start of Libra season (he’s Libra, too). He insisted on recording live, in the most honest manner possible. At one point he had to vacate the sound booth, snapping photos amid the musicians, fully entering the moment.

Division 81’s initial releases include LSD pt. 1, a collage of hip-hop and deep house from beatmaker Radius; Afro Patterns, with Detroit DJ/techno house producer Alton Miller (vinyl only) and Sardinia-based Two Thou’s Oraculu. British tuba titan Theon Cross’ live New York recording with Collier, Affirmations (a joint release with New Soil Music), fared well in DB’s August reviews section, but extra vivid is the debut from brilliant bassist Emma Dayhuff.

Innovations & Lineage: The Chicago Project was actually captured in Wisconsin at Madison’s Cafe Coda, boasting Dayhuff and Collier alongside Windy City legends Dee Alexander and Kahil El’Zabar. Corollary to Dayhuff’s doctoral thesis, the Coda concert is a doozy. At time of writing, the 38-year-old duetted superbly with Patricia Barber at the Chicago Jazz Festival, and Daze already has her follow-up (recorded at UCLA’s Herb Alpert Studio) readying for release next spring. Dr. Dayhuff, assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said, “Sonny is an incredibly adept community builder … who keeps the creative process at the forefront of his vision and business model.”

Despite Division 81’s commitment to confound expectation, Coltrane’s centennial in 2026 augured a return to Van Gelder’s this September with Collier. “We touched on it with Cosmic Transitions,” Daze said, “but this will be straight to the point. People will say, ‘It should be Isaiah’s music,’ but it’ll be a substantial dedication to our hero. It’s 100 years since this brother came to Earth. Where would his music be if he’d lived five years longer?”

There’s no time like now for Sonny Daze. Division 81 seeks out-of-body, yet real, aural trips. “At my father’s funeral they said, ‘Life is a but a vapor,’” Daze remembered, and telescoped back, disavowing a sardonic mantra he’d hear from Uncle Paris on those musically intoxicating cruises of his youth: “It’ll be greater later!” DB