JAMES LAVELLE

Biography
Press Release, June 29, 2004

JAMES LAVELLE
Biography

“I became a DJ because I couldn't break-dance and I was no good at graffiti,” says JAMES LAVELLE.  Still under the age of 30, he has already become one of the most recognized producer/DJs to emerge from London’s underground by association with his cutting-edge breaks label Mo’ Wax Records, the power-production of U.N.K.L.E., Brit-rock darlings South and now for a second turn with the highly prestigious globe-trotting DJ series Global Underground with GU #026: ROMANIA, due out this spring.

  Like the rest of us, it was the parental record collection that switched James Lavelle onto music.  His early sets included the likes of Stevie Wonder and Deep Purple with an eclectic mix that was an embryonic blueprint both for James as a DJ and for his label Mo' Wax.

  Good tunes are good tunes-the genre doesn't matter, but the one style that initially captivated him was hip-hop, and not just the music.  The UK’s fledgling scene was as much about Tacchini as it was Whodini and the breaks were the rhythms for break-dancing.   Inspired by the sound systems put together by the likes of Afrika Bambaataa in the States and by the Wild Bunch over in Bristol, James started buying records by the bucket-load, providing the soundtracks to his hometown Oxford's own blockparty scene. The first party he put on at 15 made him enough money to get a pair of decks, and when Oxford starting to run out of vinyl, London beckoned.

  Even during his work experience at Bluebird Records in West London, James Lavelle was selling tunes to the founding fathers of modern British dance: Pete Tong, Dave Dorrell, Norman Jay, Tim Simenon--the list is as long as it is distinguished.  It also included Gilles Peterson, whose new Talkin' Loud label, with its fusion of different sounds, had given James an idea for a label of his own.  

Taking its name from the night he'd started promoting, Mo' Wax Please, Mo' Wax was set up in 1993 with £1,000 from Honest Jon's Records where James (still only 19) now worked. At Honest Jon's, James had started putting hip-hop tracks alongside the classic breaks that had inspired them; from the outset, Mo' Wax worked along similar lines.

Out on the floor, James was again looking to do something different. He was playing Saturdays at the Fridge in Brixton and with Patrick Forge at the Gardening Club but was looking to take the anything-goes eclecticism of Mo' Wax Please to a bigger audience--which made starting a club on a Monday night seem a bit odd. But That's How It Is, founded with Gilles Peterson at Bar Rumba, was an instant classic, and eight years down the line is still at the same time and in the same place.

Meanwhile, Mo' Wax was taking the Lavelle musical approach to even greater heights with the release in 1996 of DJ Shadow's seminal Endtroducing, a record that turned music on its head and catapulted Mo' Wax into the spotlight as never before. James says simply, “It changed everything,” and for a while things did go a bit mad with both him and his label in ever-increasing demand. While the groundbreaking Mo' Wax nights at the Blue Note still epitomised his laconic DIY approach to music, James found himself being overtaken by business and celebrity, thus prompting a move to Los Angeles to spend three months working on a new brainchild to be called U.N.K.L.E. It took five years to create the album Psyence Fiction.

With contributions from Ian Brown, Richard Ashcroft and Thom Yorke, the album was an immense piece of work and was the British alternative dance record that James had always envisaged making.  

The sheer length of time spent in the studio making Psyence Fiction inspired James primarily to get back into clubs and to start DJing again. A DJ support slot for the Verve followed, as did similar tours with Massive Attack, The Beastie Boys and Radiohead. James was also heavily involved in fashion, providing catwalk soundtracks for Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayn and Japanese label Ape. There was a season in Ibiza and opening night sets at London super-clubs Scala and Fabric where he continues to spin at his now famous Friday night residency.

It was a back to his roots move; a chance to play the records he loved to people who loved them, to both entertain and educate a whole new generation of clubbers in the same way he'd been entertained and educated in the '80s. Ultimately, James is just a music fan like everybody else.   “The school kid with the broken glasses who made it,” is how he terms it.  “I don't want to be in magazines, I just want to play records.”

In between playing records during this time, James produced guitar band South’s debut album From Here On In.  Lavelle’s production touch to South’s moving rock riffs struck a chord with critics and fans alike, garnering the band amazing reviews across the board.  He also put together the soundtrack for Sexy Beast , the Jonathan Glaser film featuring Ben Kingsley.

U.N.K.L.E’s newest effort Never, Never Land was just released in the U.K. this past fall.  Special remixes of songs that appear on the album can be found in America on GU #026: Romania, as well as some other Mo ‘Wax-influenced treasures.   Standouts in the mix include: “Eye 4 An Eye” remixed by Dylan Rhymes & Force Mass Motion; U.N.K.L.E. remixes of Queens Of The Stone Age’s “No One Knows” and South’s “Colours In Waves”; plus other delights from Meat Katie & Elite Force, The Chemical Brothers, Photek and Richie Hawtin.

On GU #026: Romania, James Lavelle’s sheer enthusiasm for his music ensures its freshness.  “I've got the luckiest job in the world,” he says, and you can’t help but believe him. This is the lad who has gone from stealing VW badges to being name-checked on record by Mike D; the James Lavelle musical revolution has gone full circle and that big wheel just keeps on turning.

www.globalunderground.co.uk

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  January 2004.

  For more information on JAMES LAVELLE, contact:
Alexandra Greenberg/MSO
818-380-0400 x223                 agreenberg@msopr.com

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