JAMES LAVELLE has revealed that he has put UNKLE on ice to concentrate on reconstructing his record label, MO’WAX, and his return to DJing.
Speaking to nme.com at the launch of Creamfields England on Thursday (May 11), Lavelle said the last two years since Mo’Wax was left in the lurch by the demise of parent company A&M had been “horrific,” and admitted that he had considered packing up the label altogether.
He said, “Everything goes through your mind at that point. The whole experience was pretty horrific. I had built the label up from nothing, I’d done it on my own. But it didn’t seem the right way for it to go. So I decided to keep going and hopefully you just learn from the experience, channel it and become a lot stronger in future. But it is going to take time to get it pieced together.”
XL Records picked up Mo’Wax in November ’98 and since then Lavelle has been building a studio and focusing on beefing up the label’s roster. Another priority is getting back into DJing again, and he currently has a residency at Fabric in London.
He continued: “Doing UNKLE took me away from DJing, so I’ve started to focus on that again. I’ve been inspired by a few DJs like Craig Richards and Lee Burrows.”
As previously reported by nme.com, he has recorded a soundtrack for the new film by Jonathan Glazer, director of UNKLE‘s ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights’ video. He is also currently finishing work on an album with new band South for the label. He revealed: “It is primarily a singer-songwriter, rock-based record with dance influences, acoustic influences, Stone Roses influences… a real mish-mash. I hope that they will be perceived as a great band.
“It’s exciting to be involved with people who are together as a band, rather than just working with producers or solo artists.”