Mike Monday’s productions and remixes are the kind of DJ weapon where when someone points at the CDJ curiously, you mouth ‘Mike Monday!’ back and get a solemn nod. You’re part of an elite club now, up there with Mylo, Josh Wink, Steve Bug, Sasha… you’re playing a Mike Monday tune.
Falling into dance music after moving in with one Andy Cato some 12 years ago, Mike carved out a handy rep initially as one of the prog scene’s better underground producers, before pushing on into an opposite direction, away from the progressive pigeonhole through all different kinds of house and techno.
The release of his first full artist album, ‘Smorgasbord’, is just that, impeccably crafted, funky, techy, and even cheeky, all neatly archiving his past and pointing to even crazier things in his future. Fully concentrating on DJing for a while now that the album is done, Mike swears house is as exciting as it’s ever been right now.
ITM: You were saying that house is really interesting at the moment. What was it that made you come to that conclusion?
MM: House music and dance music is always at its best when it’s really adventurous, I think. Basically, 5 years ago everything got too big, it became about the money and trying to write the next big tune. House music became too understandable, if you know what I mean. I’ll give you an example, I recently did the album launch and obviously because it was my first album a lot of my friends who used to come clubbing about 7 years ago and haven’t been for a while they come out for this. I was playing and one of them came up at the end of the night going, ‘what the f**k has happened to f**king dance music?!’ It totally blew them away, they’d never heard anything like it. What I really love about house-slash-techno, whatever you want to call it, is you need to go out and listen to it in clubs in order to understand it. It’s music you wouldn’t like your mum to listen to, know what I mean? It’s got really creative again. And that’s the way it was when I first got into house music in the early 90s. You had to experience in a club to understand it. What it lost at the turn of the century was that. It got, for want of a better word, too accessible. Once that happened people thought, ‘well I’m not making any money anyway so I may as well write what I want to write’. And that’s when the creativity really started again.
ITM: It must seem like a strange ride for you, from the progressive stuff you were known for at one time to the tweaked out, acidy, electrified stuff that you play these days..?
MM: Well, the different genres that people put things into are usually geared toward record stores and record labels and, of course, the general public, but to DJs and artists, even in order to make it whatever way, as a DJ or a producer you have to concentrate on a certain style. But, I try and keep that… even though I’m doing that within house and techno, and try and keep that as broad as possible. And possibly because when I was doing the progressive stuff I got quite badly painted into a corner when it was just one of the things I did. I hated feeling that I had to follow certain rules or a certain sound in order to do well, which is why I sort of spent the rest of the time going from anything from straight up house music all the way to sort of weird techno.
ITM: You’ve always seemed to pick interesting remixes right across the board. How do you choose what you’re going to work with?
MM: (long pause)... Well, I get asked to do a lot. What I usually do is… Often I will turn down a remix because it’s a tune I like. What I do is I listen to whatever record they’re asking me to remix and I see if I could do a job of it. I think, ‘what would I do with this, how would I change this? How would I add value to this package’, ‘cause at the end of the day people want to sell records, that’s why they’re getting a remix. Even if I really love the tune and I don’t think I can do a good job of it then I’ll turn it down. I’ve done a lot of remixes but it’s been over quite a long period of time, so I’m not in the business of just knocking them out, five or six mixes a month, it’s much more particular with what I do. In the olden days I did have a period where I did a load, but again that experience taught me that I’ll never do it again, because all you do is end up cheapening your own worth, really. I only ever do a remix if I can bring something to the party. For example with that Shurikan track (Living Inside, on Freerange), I heard a part and thought I could do something really good with that, and so I wrote the break first and the rest of the tune fell into place after that. That’s been one of my most successful remixes actually. I got Josh Wink getting in touch with me saying, ‘I was out last weekend and I heard that Shurikan remix and I love it’, which is great because he’s a legend. It’s quite tough… it almost makes people’s ears bleed. I got what I wanted, I could see how far I could push it without making people run away (laughs). I love records that make me go, ‘what the f**k?’ I absolutely love ‘em. You can’t always play them but I love to buy them.
ITM: It doesn’t always work that way.
MM: Sometimes it does, sometimes you can be very lucky… I was in Lisbon, and I did a gig at Zoo Club in Jardim, and from the first record I played I could tell they were up for complete and utter mentalness, so I was; ‘right, bring out the big guns!’, and it was almost like the more out there and the more off the wall I played the more [they] loved it. That, to me, is a dream. I’m not the type of DJ to stick to my guns and play something mental because I love it. The most important thing is getting whatever kind of crowd it is to go with it. And even if you’re put into the wrong kind of club for you, it’s more of a challenge, like; ‘right, how am I going to get these people into what I’m into?’, and sometimes you have to play something a little more accessible and get them into your groove.
ITM: Given how you approached the remixes, you approached the album quite differently. What were you thinking, going into the album?
MM: Well I suppose the main goal doing the album was to finish the bloody thing. I think writing the album is like writing a novel or something… actually finishing it, getting it done, is a triumph in itself. The main thing was just getting something out. But in terms of what’s actually on the album, I didn’t really know what I wanted at the beginning, I wanted basically for people to understand where it comes from, the kind of music that I write, and in the end what ended up happening was that was what the album ended up as. It explains me musically. It’s every genre of music that has been important to me either as an influence or more specifically used. That’s me, that’s what I love. And that’s why it’s pretty broad as an album. At the same time I was very concerned that people weren’t alienated so I didn’t make something entirely different. I wanted to do something that would bring them in. Writing music in the form of an album is a really great way of writing music. It feels like that album is an underline under everything I’ve done so far. It’s a good beginning. The next album will be the one where I take it somewhere.
ITM: Does being better known as a DJ rather than as a producer free you up at all?
MM: When I DJ, I’m quite hard on myself, I think you have to be. In order to get good, as good as I want to be, you have to. Ever since I finished the album I haven’t done anything. I’ve been DJing since June. It’s the first time in my life when I’ve just been a DJ and not a producer, and even when I was writing the album I was still working on the DJing a lot because it’s something I see as a separate thing. Right now on average I probably spend 70% of my time doing DJ related things and 30% of my time producing. If you want to be really great you’ve got to put your time in. You can’t do anything else really.
ITM: How much of your stuff makes it into the sets?
MM: On average probably one or two. I don’t really have a policy on it, sometimes people come to see me play and are desperate to hear a particular tune [so] I will play the tune, but in general, you know… it all depends. In Australia I’ll definitely be playing tracks off the album. I’d be stupid if I didn’t (laughs).
Mike Monday touches down in Australia this weekend and will be sticking around until early January:
15 Dec – Brisbane, Empire
16 Dec – Sydney, Kink
29 Dec – Byron Bay, Play
31 Dec – Sydney, Reckless Spice Boat Party
1 Jan – Perth, Sun Electric
5 Jan – Melbourne, Room 680
His debut album ‘Smorgasbord’ is out now through Playtime/Stomp.
