I Monster interview: “If you want us to carry on making music, we’ve got to make a living!”

Meet the latest unlikely stars of TikTok

You may not think you know I Monster, but take it from us, you do. How you know them, on the other hand, will probably be down to your age, or certainly your internet browsing habits.

For years – decades even – they were synonymous with ‘Daydream In Blue’, a floaty, gently glowing tour de force with a surreal, trip hoppy edge and wonderfully dramatic orchestral trimmings. It was great, and it ended up all over the TV and film worlds.

Then suddenly, a couple of years back, something rather strange happened. They suddenly noticed that another track from their second album – the creepy, crooning ‘Who Is She?’ – had overtaken their previously undisputed top track on streaming services. After a bit of investigation, they discovered the track had gone viral on Tik-Tok.

And so the pair – Dean Honer, also part of hitmaking crew All Seeing Eye in the 90s and 00s, and more recently Moonlandingz, and Jarrod Gosling – are back with an expanded version of that album and their first live shows in donkey’s years. We caught up with them both in their Sheffield studios to find out more…

JUNO DAILY: Is it strange picking an album from 20 years ago and just suddenly getting back into the world of it?

Dean: Yeah! It’s been interesting… On a technical side, a lot of the tracks from that record were done on fairly obsolete – or “vintage” equipment as they now call it.

JUNO DAILY: For example?

Dean: An Atari ST… ‘Daydream’ was done with an Atari ST and an *AKAI sampler (*58 seconds; audio muffled – check if it’s AKAI).

JUNO DAILY: They say that the Atari ST had the best timing ever. I don’t know if you agree?

Dean: With MIDI timing, yes! It’s supposed to have been the best MIDI interface, because it was actually built into the computer. As opposed to buying an external midi interface for your Mac or whatever.

But MIDI can only be so tight because MIDI is serial. It can’t actually make two sounds at the same time. They’re always slightly off. It just sticks out a linear line of command. So, MIDI is never going to be as tight as something like a [Roland] MC-4 micro-composer, which is analog. Anyway, it was all done on pretty basic equipment.

But once we signed our record deal, and got a bit of money — we had to create a whole new album, because ‘Daydream’ was the only track that was ready to go — we bought new equipment. Apple Mac laptops and desktops.

I know we had ADAT’s as well — all kinds of different technology that’s obsolete now. So when it came to revisiting the tracks / preparing them for live, it meant a lot of them had to be rebuilt from scratch. It was an interesting thing to do. It meant we could update the production.

JUNO: Are you touring? I didn’t know!

Dean: Yeah. It’s the 20th anniversary of the album. Most of the tracks we play – 70% of the set will be from Neveroddoreven.

[general chat about reissues cut]

Juno: With your reissue, it’s quite a big, expanded version, isn’t it?

Jarrod: The vinyl is; the CD is just going to be a straight reissue — that’s not a double. It’s because more people seem to want vinyl than CD now (in the physical format).

Anyway, disc two of Neveroddoreven has only ever been released digitally or on CD before, so there will be extra tracks from b-sides and things. And there’s three “new” old tracks on there, which we put out as singles. They never appeared as a physical thing before. If we weren’t doing vinyl then it wouldn’t be double. It’s because it’s the first time on vinyl for a lot of it.

Dean: You know the reason it’s all kicked off again for I Monster? You know the Tik-Tok stuff?

Juno: Tell us more

Dean: Over a year ago, one of our old tracks called ‘Who Is She’ got picked up by some kids on Tik-Tok and quickly went viral. So you had the Kardashians using it as a backing track to a Tik-Tok. And all the top Tik-Tok-ers using it. That led to a massive increase in our Spotify plays of that track. It became our biggest track!

It also led to live agents looking at our data and saying: ‘You’ve got so many people listening in Turkey, or so many people listening in Poland, we could see we could set up a tour for you and you would sell out those venues.’

And that coincided with us already planning to reissue Neveroddereven on vinyl, because there was demand for it on our social media.

JUNO: How did the Tik-Tok thing start?

Dean: Jarrod knows. It was linked to a Japanese video game or something?

Jarrod: I was looking at Spotify for Artists to see how the tracks were doing. I noticed ‘Who Is She’ was above ‘Daydream’, which had never happened before. I started to wonder what was happening. After it being top for a week or so, I messaged the label, who own the rights to it, to ask why it’s suddenly so popular. (he then explained that his daughter, who was 10 at the time, said kids that play this Japanese anime-themed computer game post clips from it on their Tik-Tok account, and that they’re using the ‘Who Is She’ track as the music behind it)

That’s how it started. It just snowballed… Towards Christmas 2022 it was doing a million streams a day, I think.

JUNO: And that’s after having your whole career dominated by ‘Daydream’!

Jarrod: It’s good to say we’re not a one-hit wonder!

JUNO: I was interested to see that Barry [Smith] from Add N To (X) had a connection in the sense that I can hear a bit of Goldfrapp and new glam

Jarrod:  At the time in the late 90s, we were making techno music — bleep-y hard instrumental electronic music — and did loads of it for a few years. Then Drum ‘n’ Bass was happening with all these chopped up loops — mainly drums, but really fast, mind-boggling and not necessarily dance-y or anything. And at the same time I was listening to a lot of old 1960s psychedelic and progressive rock; and soundtrack-y stuff. There was a sort of easy-listening thing to that.

I’d be buying Morricone soundtracks from films. You know, Italian 60s. And then at the same time going to charity shops and getting all these really cheesy, old easy-listening records, that are not particularly cool like Morricone, but still interesting because of the production, and the time when it was done in the 60s or 70s.

So instead of joining the drum ‘n’ bass/jungle thing – which we really liked, but there was a lot of people doing it, and doing it really well – we started chopping up jazz rock loops; easy listening loops, with strings and trumpets. Stuff like James Last or somebody more obscure.

Due to that, it didn’t sound like dance music. Even though it had samples in it and was groove-based. It wasn’t four-to-the-floor or anything like that.

And then because of the type of music — it inspired doing some kind of lyrics, even if it was just, say, one word. And that’s what started the song idea over the top. Very basic, simple things at first. And then it grew from that. ‘Daydream’ was one of the tracks from that era.

JUNO: But this is your second album.

Jarrod: The first one is called These Are Our Children. We received an Arts Council grant to basically put out 1000 or 500 proper pressed CDs. We just gave them out for free. And that was the first time that ‘Daydream’ was released, in some way. 

It’s a different version. It’s on Bandcamp, so you can stream it. It’s hard to find the CDs now. If you flick through that, there’s a lot of that kind of idea: a lot of very basic songs with just a few words coming in and out. That’s the starting point of it really.

Dean: We couldn’t release it properly because it was full of samples. We didn’t have the money to clear them, which is why we never sent it off to labels or anything.

JUNO: Sounds quite similar to what you (Dean) were doing with All Seeing I…

Dean: We were all hanging out together. I was producing Add N to (X) at the time. I produced two or three of their albums.

So there was a bit of a crossover between everything. Barry and I set up a little record label called Circle, which we put ‘Daydream’ out on as a 7″ single. And that’s what got onto the radio.

We also put out a ‘Fat Truckers’ 7″ single, which was kind of a bit more Suicide-y/punk-y. And then a track by Jason, who I was in the All Seeing I with, under whatever name he used. So there was quite a bit of cross-pollination between Add N To (X), the All Seeing I, and I Monster.

Juno: What’s it like when adverts play you – does it surprise you?

Jarrod: We usually know about it first if it’s been done above board. We’ve heard it quite a lot of times on TV that it’s sort of like, ‘that’s cool, yeah’ but we’ve heard it before.

JUNO: But what about the first time?

Jarrod: Yeah 20 years ago of course it felt more exciting… It’s been nice to have some of the other tracks get used.  I remember when we posted something on Facebook about one of the tracks, probably ‘Daydream…’, getting used for a TV advert (we don’t like posting stuff like that anyway because it looks like you’re a bit of a sellout) someone commented: ‘Why do you have to do this? You know, put your music onto an advert for a big company and things?’ It’s like, well, because no-one’s buying bloody music anymore!’ If you want us to carry on making music, we’ve got to make a living!

Dean: We have turned some dodgy stuff down though!

Jarrod: Yeah, we wouldn’t be putting our music forwards for the Conservative Party, or UKIP! Magnum Ice Cream we’re probably alright with.

JUNO: I noticed on your Wikipedia page, which isn’t always necessarily 100% accurate, that it says that you’re an ongoing act. So will there be new material? It’s a while since you made an album, isn’t it seven years or something? Have I got that right?

Jarrod: Something like that, yeah. Bright Sparks was the last one we did that was sort of a conceptual, synthesiser, keyboard nerd album. But pop songs, you know. Not instrumentals or anything. Sort of accessible.

At the same time as the ‘Who Is She’ Tik-Tok kick-off thing — and reissue that we were wanting to do anyway — we’d been wanting to do a brand new album anyway. We were talking about that.

Since this Tik-Tok thing blew up that kicked us into life to start the album proper. So we’ve been working on a new album. We started probably a year ago. We’ve got a lot done, but we had to drop everything because of the tour to concentrate on getting that together. The next stage after the tour is finishing the new album off, getting that out and seeing what we can do with that. For me that is more exciting than all this. It’s good, but you know, it is 20-years-old for us. You get enjoyment out of making new music.

JUNO: How’s it shaping up?

Jarrod: It’s a simple vibe – with oddball lyrics.

Dean: Plenty of old samples. Kind of obscure film samples that you’ve kind of taken and then written over. There’s loads of stuff! We kind of went a bit mad, really. We’ve probably got like 35 tracks or something on the go. So I think it’s good to have this break from it now with the tour and then come back and focus on what it should be.

Ben Willmott

To buy the new Redux version of Neveroddereven click here

I Monster play live at Sheffield Leadmill with Kid Acne (live) and Acid Klaus (DJ) on June 21, London Rich Mix (22) and Glasgow King Tut’s Wah What Hut (24)