Meeting Jona, a passionate audio editor and DJ!
- by The Lioncub
- Jul 19
- 5 min read
Hearing Jona's edit of Peter Green's Proud Pinto during Balearic Breakfast brought a big Smile on my face. I decided to contact him to have a chat!
1) Hi Jona! Thank you so much for joining us here on the Balearic Breakfast blog! Can you present yourself to us and share the musical journey that led you to become a DJ?
I was born in ’82 & emerged from the DIY skate & graffiti culture with punk & hiphop
but turned into electronics after hearing Ken Ishii’s “extra” in ’95 via my nephew Jo.
Around the same time, Natacha, who worked with my father, introduced me to nightlife. I was still a young kid but started working at the infamous Kozzmozz parties here &
got to hang out with living legends like Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, DJ Hell, Green Velvet... inspirational to say the least!
My hometown, Ghent, has been quite influential for electronic music: the Boccacio club with new beat & house, R&S records (no introduction needed) and, with parties like I<3 Techno, 10 Days Off or even Kozzmozz & Eskimo I was spoiled and got a proper education. At the age of 18, I was living in the Kuiperskaai, and my neighbours on the left side were Stephen & David (soulxwax, 2manydjs) and on the right side there was Mo & Benoelie (aka the glimmers)! So yeah.. Nuff said i guess? 😂
Fun fact: it happened more than once that I would find some vinyl records just in the middle of the street early in the morning 😍 Crazy years Indeed!
2) How did you start editing songs, remixing them? What was the first song you ever worked on?
Coming from the hiphop culture, I have a deep & profound love for both mixtapes & heavy beatmixing, and I always loved the extended 12” versions. So, around the end of the 2000s, with the downfall of vinyl sales due to the rise of serato & digital mixing, I’ve made my first edit. I remember doing it simply because I wanted to mix the song into my set, but the intro was too short… The track was “I’m so happy now” by Willy Wright from Mississippi, and I think it’s still somewhere on soundcloud!
Around the same time I started The Eclectic Ladyland Liveshow overhere on local radio. It was an sunday afternoon 2-hour show and, as the name suggests, I would play just anything that i liked – which has always been my nr 1 rule as a dj: i play it if i like it (and vice versa) – from jazz to techno, psychedelic rock to cumbia, via trip hop to greek Miroloi songs…
In the past 15 years i had made tons of edits, solely for my own show and my sets, but I never did anything else with them, and had no other plans whatsoever. Then, this year, in February, I broke my 2 heels (don’t ask me about it) and I was stuck to my couch 24/7 for 3 months. During the first week I managed to create about 27 mixtapes but I just got bored, so I started flipping thru old boxes of photos & loveletters & hard drives which were full of music, and I decided to send the edits I dug up to some musical friends worldwide. One of them told me: “Why don’t you put them on bandcamp?”
Honestly, I had no clue, but, like often, I answered “Sure, why not” and while doing that, I realised making some more edits would be a perfect way to kill the seas of time that I had ahead of me! Making edits is fun, of course, but it may also become very boring, repetitive & time consuming, depending on how you work. The first 2 edits I’ve made this year were actually more kinda mash-ups (Bicep’s ‘glue’ vs Sono ‘keep control’ (2 tracks that I loved to mix while dj’ing peak time) & Kelis ‘caught out there’ vocals over my all time fav song Quantic ‘cumbia sobre el mar’)!
Another fun fact while we’re at it: I finished the last one after approx 200 hours of non-stop funking around, and had send it in all my enthousiasm to let’s say the A-list of funkateers: Gilles, Lefto, Questlove, etc just to find out, after sending, that I had sent the wrong file! I kid you not 😂 I had also posted the Bicep / Sono track to the Amazing facebook group Balearic Burger (Follow them if you don't already & thank me later). Then, A little later, the Balearic Burger headhoncho John C Bawcombe reached out to me (S/O JOHN! LOVE YOU LONGTIME!!) and told me: "Listen, you got something here, do something with it..." He really pushed me to next level... John will never acknowledge it, but without him we wouldn’t be talking right now!! He connected me with so many key players in the balearic world, and really pushed things further!
3) Speaking of edits, Colleen played your Proud Pinto edit from Peter Green. How did that remix happen? Why did you chose this track? What did you want to achieve with it?
I was over the moon when I heard Colleen had played my track! When it comes to editing, my only purpose is to make it dj-friendly. Generaly speaking, I don’t overdo things, because the songs I pick are all favs of mine & I respect the artists so much that I simply extend the tunes, nothing more.
As for the songs, well, again, they've been in my bags for 25 years & I would often say to myself ‘Why is this song so short?’ or ‘This could use a longer intro!’. With todays technical possibilities, I’m simply able to answer these two questions! So yeah, i just do it i guess 😉
By the way, my biggest inspiration has always been Greg Wilson, the don of edits! Since hearing Credit To The Edit vol.1, a milestone and true testimony of the art of editing & DIY culture in general, I knew I wanted to edit songs!
Jona's Bandcamp: https://telledits.bandcamp.com
Jona's Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/eclectic-ladyland/
4) What's next for you musicaly speaking?
Both my imagination & songs "to do lists" are endless, so we’ll see where it ends! For now, I’ve got my first official remix coming up and I’m working with the legend Trevor Fung on some things, you’ll hear about those later!
TELL#50 was released this week with edits from Jaqueline Taieb, Glass Beams, Venus Gang, Los Pekenikes, Scott Lavene & Pat Metheny & that’s what Tell Edits is all about: from Yé Yé to Outernational Sounds, via Psychedelica to Tropicalia over Rock to Jazz & back. No limits. No gods. No Masters!
Make edits, Not war ✌🏻
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