Drum Monkeys

Billy Borez and Carl Loben met through mutual friend Barry Ashworth, and soon discovered that they’d both been to Barrys Monkey Drum night back in the day. Hence the Drum Monkeys, once theyd started making tunes together.



Back in the old hardcore days at the turn of the Nineties, Billy recorded as Zero B. His biggest track from back then was Lock Up, a tune that stills brings goosebumps to older ravers and that still crops up all over the shop. Billy has subsequently worked with everybody from Carl Cox to the Freestylers.



Carl has interviewed countless musicians and artists in his journalistic capacity, and is still the Music Editor of DJ Magazine. In parallel he’s DJ’d all over the world, and wishes he’d started producing younger.



Drum Monkeys first release was Electro Ladyland, the second release on the fledgling Westway imprint. A shared EP with the Velours Brothers, it received a corkin tech-nasty breaks mix from Klaus Heavyweight Hill and got some quite good reviews.



The DMs then reworked Ils’s Loving You (Distinctive) into an end-of-night breaks anthem. They rejigged Madox’s disco-funk breakbeat thing Movin’, and their cheeky booty of a certain Specials track was rinsed out by DJs like FreQ Nasty, Krafty Kuts, Eddy TM and Ali B off CDR. In May 2006 they bashed out a quick revamp for Dreadzone’s world cup song Lion Shirt just in time for the tournament.



When the DMs released their Brazil-inspired Batty Batucada, complete with Plaza De Funk remix, they even had Fatboy Slim phoning up for a copy. Their summer anthem Acid Drop featuring the lovely K-Star on vocals was well received, and lately they’ve been back on a remix tip – reworking tracks by Sparks, The Whip, The B52s, Lo-Fi Allstars, Dom Almond, Rob Smith from Smith & Mighty, Access Denied, The Migrants, B-Phreak and D-Funk - as well as new original material.



Currently just Carl plays out under the Drum Monkeys name, although plans are afoot for a full Drum Monkeys live experience.



Bookings: jenny@corsair-represents.com / asad@apolloartists.co.uk