Jon Carter initially rose to prominence in the 1990s as an English big beat DJ. However, as his career progressed both his productions and his DJ sets became known for including a variety of musical styles. From 2004 onwards, he began to scale back his DJing due to tinnitus, but simultaneously launched a second career as a businessman, co-founding a company that runs a chain of live music pubs across London.
DJ and production career
Carter began his musical career playing in bands when he was at Southampton University. Dropping out of his studies, he moved back to London and started to learn studio engineering, ending up working in the No U-Turn studios which at the time was involved in the nascent jungle scene of the early 1990s. During his spare time, Carter began making his own tracks, which caught the ear of Mark Jones, the founder of the Wall of Soundrecord label. Carter was eventually signed to Wall of Sound and released his first record "The Dollar" under the name Artery. At around the same time, Carter was beginning to develop a reputation as one of the regular DJs at The Heavenly Social, a Sunday evening club in the Albany pub on Great Portland Street in central London. Alongside the other regular DJs The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Richard Fearless of Death in Vegas, the night was instrumental in developing the form of electronic dance music that became known as big beat, with its mix of rock, hip hop and breakbeat, as well as dance. In 1995 Carter left Wall of Sound and signed with Heavenly Records to produce dub and dancehall-influenced dance music under the name of Monkey Mafia. The project developed into a full band playing live shows, and an album, Shoot the Boss, appeared in 1998. By now he was also in demand to produce mix albums and remix songs by bands as diverse as U2, Manic Street Preachers and The Beach Boys. By the end of the 1990s he had secured DJ residencies at several nightclubs in the UK and was regularly playing sets abroad. In 1999 Carter moved back to Wall of Sound and its new subsidiary Nu Camp to release "Women Beat Their Men", a house record under the new pseudonym of Junior Cartier. In 2003 he and fellow DJ Tim Sheridan formed a short-lived record company, Saville Row, and released a few singles on the label. A severe bout of tinnitus curtailed his DJing activity and brought a halt to his record productions for a couple of years, but by 2008 Carter had returned, first with another one-off collaboration with Tim Sheridan, and then "The Rabbit" with Stretch Silvester of Stretch & Vern, the first single in a planned series of collaborations with other DJs under the name Gentleman's Agreement. He has also teamed up with Liverpool-born, New York-based DJ Alex Blanco under the name Roosevelt High. In 2009 he became a member of the Rizla Invisible Players, an ever-changing collective of musicians and artists. Alongside Carter, the 2009 line-up included Jazzie B, Micachu, Gruff Rhys and David Shrigley and performed at a number of festivals across the UK that year, including RockNess, Lovebox, The Big Chill and Bestival.
Business ventures
Carter's first foray into business was in 1998 when he became co-owner of The Lock Tavern pub in Camden, London. In 2004 he co-founded 580 Limited, a company which owned several live music pub venues, initially across the UK but later solely in London. Working with the company, Carter helped to set up The Lock Tavern Tent at the Glastonbury Festival from 2003 until 2010, and a Lock Tavern arena at the Field Day festival in 2010. The company was also involved with the Beacons Festival that takes place annually near Skipton in North Yorkshire. In October 2014 the four pubs in the 580 Limited chain were sold to the brewer Young's.
Personal life
Carter married model-turned-DJ/presenter Sara Cox in October 2001. Their daughter Lola Anne was born on 13 June 2004. In December 2005 the couple announced their split, and divorced the following year. He has since married again, to second wife Nina. Carter also has a son from a previous relationship.
