A drawing from Mr. Scruff's "Keep It Unreal" series
I hesitate to describe the work of a grown-ass man as "adorable," but there's something so endearingly childlike about Andy Carthy's doodles. Not in an "oh my god this is a dog that looks like a panda I'm going to die from cuteness overload" kind of way, though. Carthy's cartoons are deliberately understated, more likely to elicit a goofy grin than a squeal.
The Manchester-based DJ, producer, and illustrator, who goes by Mr. Scruff (a reference to the Mr. Men cartoons and his own unkempt appearance), has created an entire animated universe in the span of his 20-year musical career—one populated by lumpy, potato-like characters with a tendency to look slightly stupid. You'll find these hand-drawn characters on the flyers for his club nights, dancing around his animated music videos, and especially on the covers of his seven studio albums—including his most recent, Friendly Bacteria, which arrives today on Ninja Tunes. (Check out our exclusive premiere of "Where Am I.")
"I really liked the phrase 'friendly bacteria,'" says Carthy of the album. "Bacteria is sort of a bad word, so I thought it would be nice to have my friendly characters in a more sinister setting… for once."
The 42-year-old started drawing as a teenager, quickly realizing that he could make a couple bucks from his doodles if he put them on T-shirts—which he started selling in school, flipping the profits to buy records and mixtapes at his local record store. He eventually went on to study Fine Art at university "to avoid getting a proper job," all while learning to DJ by copying mixes off local radio stations.
Carthy claims he would still be a bedroom DJ if it weren't for an encounter with (the fabulously named) Barney Doodlebug, a fellow doodler-DJ who gave him his first break. "I was a bit shy," he says, "But Barney gave me the opportunity to play at his regular Sunday night at a place called Dry Bar that was quite legendary." After realizing he could make as much money playing records as he was stocking shelves at the supermarket, Carthy started booking gigs more regularly. Within two years, he was making a living as a full-fledged DJ.
Now, Carthy uses his doodles to inject a light-hearted humor into his music—but looking closer at Carthy's animated repertoire, there seems to be a certain deeper impulse running through them. Namely, these cartoons all derive their wit from flipping familiar ideas on their head. Carthy calls this "a sort of Monty Python humor—something unusual happening in normal circumstances."
You'll find this trope—of flipping the familiar into the strange—everywhere in his Keeping It Unreal series of cartoons, which originated from cartoons Carthy used to do for a UK magazine called Jockey Slut. "One of the readers wrote in complaining about the artists being interviewed and their 'keep it real' attitude—where people feel like they have toe the line in a certain way to stay in a certain scene," Carthy recalls. "Then he said, referring to my cartoons, 'Mr. Scruff, keep it unreal.'"
Keep It Unreal became the name of Carthy's 1999 album, which featured collaborations with Roots Manuva and a track made entirely of samples about fish. He also drew a series of club flyers with the same theme. One such flyer was inspired by a club called Precinct 13 in Manchester that he used to play at.
"Before 11PM, you had to keep the music down because there was a restaurant above the venue," Carthy explained. And one time, someone told him about a guy whose dinner was interrupted by music from the club. Inspired by the idea of "having this quite romantic meal, and this massive reggae bassline vibrating your soup," Carthy drew the cartoon on the spot.
In fact, most of Carthy's doodles are done on scrap paper, with not much planning or preliminary drawings. "When you're in the mood, it just comes out from the pen," he says. These simple concepts that come together quickly are pretty much the exact opposite of his musical process, which requires a lot of attention, care, and creative anguish. The difference, of course, is that music is his job, while art is just "a very enjoying thing that I dip into, that I don't have to make a living from."
In another "Keep It Unreal" cartoon, Carthy was inspired by an MC named Kwasi, who joins his monthly residency from time to time. "He's like a living cartoon character," Carthy laughs, "He's got his own peculiar language, these mad little sound bites." Again, the joke is based on a feeling of incongruity—well-dressed, prim and proper pensioners dancing on the floor of a hardcore dance club, having no idea what the fuck this crazy MC is talking about.
Carthy once again turns an everyday idea on its head in this cartoon about the alternate history of rave culture. "Everyone knows what the history of rave is," he says. "People feel like they belong to this lineage. So it's quite nice to flip it, and transpose it to something that's quite the opposite: a barn dance."
His cartoons tend to toy with the weird feeling of friction that occurs of when one world brushes up agains another—and ultimately it's what drives is DJing too. "With music, you've got certain synth sounds working against the drums. A bit of push and pull and friction in your music—that's what gives it its energy. If you have something that's slightly unsettling among the familiar elements, that gives it a kind of mystery. I'm always in search for that in my music."
At the end of the day, Carthy is less concerned about whether people "get" the subversive humor of his doodles, and more concerned about encouraging the kind of openness that humor provokes in people. By projecting animated versions of his cartoons on the walls of his parties, "you can get people to smile at each other at poignant points of the night, which is a beautiful thing."
Friendly Bacteria is out now on Ninja Tune. Get it here, and check out more of Mr. Scruff's cartoons on his website.
Michelle Lhooq is a writer who kind of looks like a Far Side character - @MichelleLhooq