Monkey Mafia's Jon Carter Writes His Own Rules

Jon Carter didn't ask to be compared to Fatboy Slim or the Chemical Brothers. And he doesn't care if you call his music big-beat, break-beat or raga-dub-with-a-little-bit-of-hip-hop-beat. "People should just check the music out because it can be so many different things," says the twenty-five year old East Londoner. "Sometimes it's pure house, sometimes it's more break-beat or drum 'n' bass or electro, whatever. At the end of the day, I just make the music that I want to hear." |

For the past few years, Carter's been making music everyone seems to want to hear. He's part-time super-DJ (at London's Heavenly club), part-time mega-producer (remixing tracks for U2, Prodigy, Kula Shaker and Supergrass) and leader of Monkey Mafia -- his five-man band, which released its first full-length CD, Shoot the Boss, in late 1998 to critical acclaim. No matter what he's producing or what you call it, he's heavily in demand: Carter opened for Prodigy in 1996, Roni Size/Reprazent in 1997, and, most recently, Massive Attack.

That's no mean feat in the British dance scene, where there's a new flavor-of-the-month every week. "It's a constant achievement to stay at that level," says Carter. "You can't just say, 'Oh, excellent, I made it. Here we are' There are always new people getting on the back of the boat pushing people off the front. You have to stay on the boat."

When did he feel he was first on the boat? "When I first saw posters all over [London] for the first single, in 1995, for "Blow the Whole Joint Up," he explains. "The logo was really eye-catching. I just walked around town saying, 'Eh, that's my shit up there.'"

Carter wasn't exactly an overnight sensation, though. He played in a local rock band called Everybody Burns (but got sick of "doing toilet venues") and honed his DJ skills by engineering jungle records for No U-Turn Records and working with the highly regarded Wall of Sound label. Of course, this followed the usual lot of crap jobs. His worst recollection: "I worked in a seed mill where they brought seeds in from the mill and I had to paint them with this pink pesticide stuff. It was highly toxic stuff. That was fairly depressing."

It was also the kind of experience that shaped Carter's view of the world. The man behind Shoot the Boss doesn't like working for others, and he hopes his music can elevate listeners long enough to at least have a good time. "We're just trying to escape the everyday drudgery of work," he says. "At the end of the day, [we're all] just trying to escape from some bastard who tells us to look busy if we're not busy pushing a fucking broom around. If you can get away with making a living doing what you love, then that's the biggest fight you can win."

Carter doesn't just do what he loves, he brings new blood into the now-stagnant big-beat arena. His affinity for reggae, dub and raga sets his music apart, creating high-energy songs that launch into toasting fits, scratching attacks and various rhythmic and electronic hi-jinks. There's even a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Long As I Can See the Light" with soulful female vocals from Shirzelle.

"I'd get bored very quickly if it was one sound all the way through," Carter admits. "It has to change. You have to hear the difference. I hear other bands coming up and doing more obvious versions of what I do, using moreobvious samples and stuff like that, and it just bores me to tears ... When we were first starting up -- like Death in Vegas and Chemical Brothers -- we were staying away from the obvious samples. You don't really want to revisit those territories. Other bands come in and say, 'Oh, why haven't they done these ones?' They're just going for the obvious cheap shots, you know? They think they rock hard but they don't."

Did someone say something about comparisons?

JAMES OLIVER CURY(December 23, 1998)