The iconic record label celebrates Its anniversary with a once-in-a-lifetime collab with PLEASURES.
It’s 1992 and Britain is the center of the music scene.
Brit Pop teaches how to be in the world, what to listen to, how to dress, and even what attitude to have in public; James Lavelle is a 24-year-old record enthusiast from Oxford, precocious and ambitious, eager to break through as an underground artist in a landscape saturated with indie rock.
James founds a label, Mo’ Wax Records, discovers an overweight nerd from San Francisco named Joshua Paul Davis, who will become known to the world under the pseudonym DJ Shadow, and with him forms a band destined to make music history, to rewrite its contours and mechanics, eventually creating a new musical subgenre somewhere between industrial hip hop, garage, house, dub, techno: trip hop.
Their U.N.K.L.E. project is ambitious: a super band involving key figures in British alternative rock such as Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, and other illustrious and occasional collaborators who contribute to the project’s success even before it begins.
The first two records are well-received, but something is changing: money management and drug taking threaten the band’s future. In the meantime, Mo’ Wax Records gathers around it a lineup of pretty good artists, including DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, AIR, David Axelrod and Money Mark. At the core of Mo’ Wax‘s sound is trip hop, but also a lot of experimentation: the idea is to release record after record, in a continuous turnover of releases, at a time in history when records are selling like hotcakes.
