Music : Jackin House, Electro House, Tech House, Electro, Breaks, Minimal Techno, Detroit Techno and Funky Techno
SLIDE's 'Very Good Friday'
At Carling Academy Oxford
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
Friday 21 March
11pm-4am
£10 advance
Described once as the Hunter S. Thompson of DJs, James Lavelle remains as individual a figure in contemporary music as he was as a teenager, when he first gate-crashed his way in with the genre-shattering MoWax Records. Now he divides time between his internationally-renowned DJ career, his UNKLE act with singer/producer Richard File, and a brand new independent set-up: Surrender-All, which combines music, fashion and art.
The DJing takes him to clubs like Womb in Tokyo and Fabric in London. UNKLE have just completed, ‘War Stories’, their third album after the international success of ‘Psyence Fiction’ and its follow-up, ‘Never Never Land’. And Surrender is a new creative centre that connects everything Lavelle is interested in – a record label, a studio, a clothing line.
MoWax was fresh, frenetic and freewheeling, spawning artists as diverse as DJ Shadow, LA Funk Mob, DJ Krush and Carl Craig. Equally, the label was involved in the young and upcoming eclectic and electronically influenced music scene which bred producers and artists such as Tim Goldsworthy, who developed into DFA and 3D from Massive Attack.
Lavelle helped to set-up clubs such as Blue Note, Fabric, Bar Rumba and The Scala (and was the first to ever do nights there), as well as The Gardening Club and Fridge (the latter being a place where at the age of 16, James became the youngest DJ to have a residency in London).
Lavelle’s act UNKLE began as a loose MoWax ‘supergroup’, originally started by James, Tim Goldsworthy (DFA Records) and Kudo (Major Force fame). Having released a number of singles, Tim moved to New York and Kudo to Japan after which James proceeded to record artist and friend DJ Shadow, of which his 1998 album ‘Psceynce Fiction’ recruited guests like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Badly Drawn Boy and The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft to an album of beat-heavy experimental beauty.
Trimmed down to a duo of Lavelle and singer/producer Richard File, UNKLE collaborated with director Jonathan Glazer on the soundtrack to his stylish gangster movie ‘Sexy Beast’. In 2002 they released ‘Never, Never Land’, an album which brought an electronic dimension to the sound. Ian Brown sang ‘Reign’. ‘In A State’, with remixes from DJ legend Sasha. There were contributions from Jarvis Cocker, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, and Massive Attack’s 3D.
2007 saw the release of UNKLE’s third studio album, ‘War Stories’. There are a host of guest vocalists that appear on this album including Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), The Duke Spirit and 3D (Massive Attack). Lavelle makes his vocal debut on this album, singing on “Hold My Hand” as well as dueting with Richard File on “Morning Rage.” Rock icon Ian Astbury of The Cult lends his world-weary drawl to “Burn My Shadow,” the first single to be taken from War Stories. Built on the pulsating, insistent beats for which UNKLE are known, it ebbs and flows between foreboding and abrasiveness. In a marked departure from the previous two albums, most of the instrumentation on War Stories is played live.
This will be Lavelle’s secong Slide appearance after the sell-out in 2006. Make sure you don’t miss out, this is a rare appearance in amongst his worldwide UNKLE commitments...