Mike Monday - Great Stuff - Mar 2008

Biography of Mike Monday

It’s been great last two years for Mike Monday. Long tipped as one of Europe’s most up-and-coming producers, in 2005 Monday’s profile exploded with a run of killer productions - experimental, jackin’, and flat-out weird but with both feet on the dancefloor and a real old-school spirit.

And now? Sasha to Steve Bug, Mylo to MANDY, David Duriez to Freestyle Man, Josh Wink to Pete Tong - from the big names to the deepest underground, everyone’s playing Mike Monday’s records...

The press loves his music as well. He’s “one of the 100 reasons dance music still rules” - IDJ. He’s “one of the main players of 2006” - DJ mag. He’s “the remixers’ remixer” - Mixmag. And there’s more praise as well for Playtime, the label on which he’s the star act - it’s “the label of the moment” (One Week to Live) and “one of the best labels to come out of 2005” (IDJ).

That’s why 2006 has seen a continuation of Monday’s heady rise. Gigs wordwide from Russia to Australia to the US to everywhere in Europe - and such a high profile in Paris that he plays there more often than most local DJs. Rave reviews for tracks and remixes on cool European labels like Simple, Freerange, Dirt Crew and Hi-Phen - and of course more tracks on Playtime in preparation for release of his debut artist album, Smorgasbord (out September 2006).

The album is a statement about where Monday is at today - one foot in house, one foot in electronica, and a finger in every pie as well. “I wanted,” Monday says, “to make an album - something you could listen to from beginning to end. Too many producers just throw together a collection of their old dance tracks”.

So Smorgasbord takes in a huge spectrum of electronic music - from Big Chill-style sunset electronica to the the funk fuelled rhythm, booty shakin’ basslines and self-effacing sense of humour in the productions for which he first became known.

In Monday’s view, there’s no confusion at all between these disperate genres. He refuses to be boxed into one specific style of dance music. He’s always held that approach, dating his ‘Mondayisms’ from early influences. “I was never a rock or indie kid at school,” he says. “While my mates were shoe gazing with Morrissey and The Cure, I was shaking my butt to anything from Pfunk to Prince.’

“When I first moved to London in the early 90s, I played saxophone in various funk and jazz bands, including Beat Foundation with Andy Cato from Groove Armada,” he says. “London was a real melting pot then, a really vibrant and exciting time for electronic music. I got hooked on house pretty quickly because it had such a real sense of possibility. Nearly every month a new sound would appear. And there weren’t any strict stylistic boundaries - just great records.”

Now that approach continues at his residency at Playtime, the London club from which the label has sprung. “Playtime is a throwback to the best days of acid house,” Monday says. “It’s the last really mixed night left in London - gay, straight, men, women, geeks, fashionistas - whatever! That’s important to us because it’s the kind of testbed you need for new music: a club where people really care what they hear - but where they want to hear something new. That’s what house music should be. It’s got to be fresh, new, so exciting you can’t help dance to it...”