Mike Monday has become an essential part of the musical week thanks to dancefloor detonators like Tooting Warrior and What Day Is It? Meet the Producer/DJ who’s putting the fun back into Mondays…

Monday Monday
“My real name is Mukhopadhyay and my great-grandmother was called Mundy. So I thought I’d call myself Monday as it’s easy to remember. My Russian DJ friend says I get booked there so often cos it’s easier to say, nothing to do with DJing obviously!”
The longer version of the story dates back to his days in Beat Foundation with Groove Armada’s Andy Cato, “It was just at the point that Andy got signed to Jive so he was hardly ever there. So (at the end of each day) I was saving the tune Georgia as Mike Tuesday and so on and eventually I got to Monday. It was the time of Boogie Nights and I thought, ‘Hmm that’s a good porn name! I don’t like taking myself too seriously so as a result I called myself Mike Monday.”
Mike admits it was difficult as Beat Foundation lost their development deal with Virgin, “Groove Armada got ‘Right we’re gonna throw lots of money at you and you’re gonna become massive superstars’. But I always said if I was in the same position as Andy I would’ve done exactly the same thing, so I didn’t have an axe to grind or anything. But it was a bit tough especially as from that day onwards you can’t move without hearing Groove Armada!! But we’re good mates and I was an usher at Andy’s wedding! It was weird but c’est la vie!”

Happy Mondays
Obviously Mike’s been around a while now, but he’s finally flavour of the month (of Mondays!). “It’s suddenly all happening. I was coming to the end of realistically being able to say I’m gonna carry on doing this cos there’s only so much banging your head against a wall you can do.” Mike reckons the long wait’s been beneficial as he’s learned so much about the business and making music - which he hopes will give his career longevity, “That’s the thing about any entertainment industry - you can never ever be ‘cool’ all the time”.
His tunes are attracting plaudits from the dance press too; IDJ magazine lists Mike Monday and Playtime Records as one of 100 reasons that dance music still rules. “You take it with a pinch of salt - there are more than a hundred reasons. I’m honoured to be, at least in one magazine, someone’s idea of one of them! It’s one of those journalistic things which sell magazines, but it was a bit of a buzz to be with TrentmØller and Switch.”
But Mike does object to being described as ‘riding the crest of an electro-wave’, “I don’t think you could call What Day Is It? electro in the slightest. It’s one of those things journalists do… I think pretty much everyone has dabbled in ‘electro’ in past 6 months. It’s become one of those words which are absolutely horrible like funky house and progressive. They start to describe everything, like ‘minimal’ does now! At the end of the day I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing and it ain’t all electro!”

Blue Monday
Mike reveals even stronger feelings about Mixmag calling him the Remixer’s Remixer. He reckons a journo hastily slapped the label on him after seeing he’d worked on tunes by remixers such as Ewan Pearson and David Duriez. “I HATE doing remixes and don’t think they’re my best work… I have enough problems with my own work; it’s like having a baby. It’s like *grunts as if in labour* really tough. I have enough problems making decisions on my own and if you add in to the mix, expectations of a label, I just get really confused. I’m not a strident kind of person; I always try to please them so it can buck your confidence.”
Mike admits they are good for money or promotion and backtracks, “I don’t HATE doing them I just prefer doing my own work!” As Paradise Soul, he and Stretch got to remix possibly the world’s biggest band, U2, “We know they liked it cos they have yes/no on every remix. We had to wait cos they were touring America and it was the longest ever five weeks. Luckily with U2, it was the one that goes, ‘Oh you look so beautiful’, I just thought that would be brilliant in a club, end-of-night hands-in-the-air! But I have got the point where I’m turning stuff down; I don’t need to do it any more. There was a period when I was literally, the phrase in the industry is ‘polishing a turd’ and I’m not doing that again!”

Manic Monday
Mike’s recently played six dates in Australia, combining a tour with a visit to see the in-laws. “I’d be lying if I said they were switched on. A lot of the scene is into that mash-up bootleg thing that was big here a year and a half ago. The first gig in Melbourne, the DJ before me was an amazing technical DJ and everyone worshipped the ground he walked on. But as far as I’m concerned what matters is the tunes. And he played the Pussycat Dolls with an electro tune underneath it! I thought, ‘Well done, but it’s CRAP!!’ I would never claim to be a full-on techno bod, but you could see some people were like, ‘Where’s the vocals, where’s Pharell over the top?’” But Mike was taken aback – or should that be Boondoggled – by the full-on fans who filmed him with their mobiles and wanted their CDs signed. He remembers the gig in Byron, “When I DJ I really don’t do anything clever, it’s all about tune choice for me – I don’t fuck around I just play records! I had these blokes standing around the DJ booth like I was James Zabiela. I was like, ‘What are you looking at I’m putting CDs on?! Move out the way I wanna see the fucking crowd!’ That was probably the best one though!”
Mike’s working on his debut artist album, Smorgasbord, so expect to hear him road-testing brand new Monday-material in his sets. He describes it as “arse-shaking type of stuff... all the various types of house music that I’m into. What Day Is It? is definitely gonna be on there cos it’s my favourite tune that I’ve ever done, but the rest will be new. I play saxophone, bassoon, piano and used to take singing lessons but can’t see that being involved, probably not! I’m quite happy to make my squelches and bleeps at the moment.”

Wanna put Monday in your diary?
Catch him at Jnr’s Jamm
Or his residency at Playtime

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