FLOORFILLER'S - EVENTS

' I became a DJ because I couldn't Breakdance. And I was no good at Grafitti.': The Underground's loss, music's gain. Well, not in every sense- musically, James Lavelle has been at the heart of the London underground for almost a decade. And in love with all kinds of music for all of his 27 years.
Like the rest of us, it was the parental record collection that switched James Lavelle on to music, early Lavelle sets included the likes of Stevie Wonder and Deep Purple, an eclectic mix that was an embryonic blueprint both for James Lavelle as a DJ and for his label Mo' Wax; good tunes are good tunes - the genre doesn't matter.
But back to the young James. And hip-hop, the one style of music that initially captivated him. It wasn't just the music; the UK's fledgling hip-hop scene was as much about Tacchini as it was Whodini and the breaks were the rhythms for breakdancing. Which James couldn't do (see above). Not that it mattered, he was already sold on the breaks.

Inspired by the sound systems put together by the likes of Afrikaa Bambaata in the states and by the Wild Bunch over in Bristol, James started buying records by the bucketload and providing the soundtracks to his home town Oxford's own blockparty scene.

The first party he put on, at 15, made him enough money to get a pair of decks and with Oxford starting to run out of vinyl, London beckoned. There's probably no better example of right place, right time.

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 a Ł1,000 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. How many clubs can you say that about?

Meanwhile, Mo' Wax was taking the Lavelle musical approach to even greater heights with the release in 1996 of DJ Shadow's seminal 'Entroducing', 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.

Whilst 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 and chose this time to decamp to Los Angeles to spend three months working on a new brainchild, an album of his own, to be called UNKLE. It took five years.

With contributions from Ian Brown, Richard Ashcroft and Thom Yorke, UNKLE was an immense piece of work, the Britsh alternative dance record that James had always envisaged making. But the sheer length of time spent in the studio 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. And then there was a season in Ibiza and opening night sets at London superclubs Scala and Fabric, where he started 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. Because 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, James has found time to produce guitar band South, and provide the soundtrack for Jonathan Glaser acclaimed movie 'Sexy Beast' which threw him in at the deep end but gave James the chance to rediscover his DIY approach to music, an approach he never lost but one increasingly difficult to hold on to.
Not that he really needs to worry- his sheer enthusiasm for his music ensures its freshness. James is one of those characters who seems to be constantly pinching himself to make sure its true. '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 namechecked on record by Mike D; the James Lavelle musical revoloution has gone full circle and that big wheel just keeps on turning.

Andy Thompson

Unkle

Unkle was never just an album. At various times in its life Unkle has been an idea, a record, almost a film and now a DJ experience. It's been a part of James Lavelle's life for so long that it's become a member of his family.
It started out life as an idea in a 15 year old school boys head. Massive Attack's 'Blue Lines' album has just been released and had given the young(er) James (he's still only 27) a blueprint on which to base the album that he would one day make. Note the absence of 'hoped to'. James Lavelle's whole life has been based around doing as much as thinking. One the idea had popped up and the light bulb flashed on, it was only a matter of time.

Albeit quite a lot of time. From that intial idea, it took almost ten years for Unkle to come to fruitition. As with most things, life got in the way but there was an element of optimism at work when James, together with Tim Goldsworthy (who went on to work with David Holmes and The Beastie Boys) and Kudo from Japanese label Major Force, set aside three months to record 'Psyencefiction' and moved into Meatloaf's house in Los Angeles for the purpose. It took five years.
That it took so long shouldn't really surprise anyone, although James still looks faintly startled by the fact. Check the credits on the 'Psyencefiction' album. Much longer and they'd read like a Burke's peerage of modern music. Thom Yorke, Ian Brown, Richard Ashcroft, DJ Shadow, Mike D- the list goes on. It was an incredible feat, drawing together so many artists from all over to collaborate on an album conceived by James only as a 'British alternative dance record' and then come up with something quite so together, so finite, as 'Psyencefiction.'

Of course, 'Psyencefiction' could have been better and the sprawling nature of the recording took its toll on the final product. 'It was too disparate, not organic enough', says James. 'It lacked a central thread.'
What it didn't lack was depth. 'Psyencefiction' seemed to examine every emotion in a way uncommom for a dance record. James had taken much inspiration from Radiohead's 'The Bends' and 'History' by The Verve (rather than Michael Jackson's) and it showed. Not just in Yorke and Ashcroft's vocal contribution but in the way the music underpinned the mood in the way a film score re-enforces the image on screen.

Initially, Unkle was also slated to be a film project, directed by Jonathan Glazer (for whom James later wrote a film score). Fragments were completed, most notably the awesome 'Rabbit In Your Headlights' video which did see the light of day before promptly being banned by those who think they know best. As usual, the public knew better; the video is already rated as an underground classic. Unfortunately, the whole thing then fell apart as parent record company A&M disintergrated shortly after 'Psyencefiction's release in 1998. It left the Unkle project almost half built- but it threw up new opportunities as the dust settled.
Coming out of the studio, blinking in the sunlight after five years in a bunker, had been something of a merciful release for all concerned. James says now that at the time he 'no longer had a perception of the world' but he set about rectifying that by throwing himself with typical enthusiasm back into DJ-ing. Back in the clubs, he rediscovered the satisfactions of getting back in amongst people- and he had a lot of catching up to do.

It was a natural step to want to take Unkle along with him, to reproduce both the sounds on 'Psyencefiction' and those in his head in a club format. With new clubs like London's Fabric offering the chance to combine live music with the intimacy of the dancefloor, James recruited original Unkle collaborator Richard File to form a curious but compelling hybrid, an exceptional, fluid live act with the groooves for dancefloor moves- Lavelle as selector, File at the controls.
Unkle's new incarnation is James trying to do something unique but mainly it's for enjoyment; for performer and audience alike.
There are moves afoot to go back into the studio for the next album but lessons have been learnt- there's no timescale. 'I want the next record to really incorporate the London clubscene', says James. 'Which also means that I want it to be fun.' In the meantime, the public will have to settle for Unkle in its dancefloor variant. And as anyone who has ever heard them will testify, it's not a bad second option.

Andy Thompson