Art of Mo’ Wax: Henry Lavelle
Part of the appeal of a Mo’ Wax release, other than the music, is their amazing artwork, and the label became famous for their visually appealing packaging. This series will take a a brief look at some of the artists who worked with Mo’ Wax between 1992–2003.
Henry Lavelle was the brother of Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle. He specialised in intricate packaging and ran his own companies Modo and 88Create. Sadly, Henry died in February 2022. He was 45.
Henry Lavelle was born in 1977, the middle child between James (born 1974) and Aiden (born 1979). They were a creative family, and when James Lavelle started Mo’ Wax in 1992 Henry would soon join him.
In 1995, aged 18, Henry acted as junior tour manager and took James, DJ Shadow, Attica Blues, Peshay, and the Psychonauts around Europe in a double decker tour bus as part of Mo’ Wax’s Braveheart Tour.
He spent two years as tour manager, but it was his work on innovative packaging he became best known for, as he worked closely with Ben Drury on the label’s releases, and their frequent use of specialty packaging. As Henry later told Music Week:
“At Mo Wax it was about, ‘What can we do that’s never been done before. How crazy can we go? Yeah; a sleeve that turns into a pyramid!’ If something was cool, we’d do it. That was the ethos.”
The pyramid sleeve was for Divine Styler’s 1999 album Wordpower 2: Directrix, while another innovative packaging was created for Psyence Fiction, the debut album from UNKLE, created by DJ Shadow and James Lavelle. For the promo Psyence Fiction Survival Kit release Henry created an expanding diorama inside the gatefold, featuring Futura’s pointman characters.
Henry co-founded Mo’ Wax Arts in 1996, which released Mike Mills’ Visual Sampler, a Money Mark toy, and collaborated with other artists like Futura, Mark Gonzales, and Glen E. Friedman. He explained in the book Urban Archaeology: 21 Years Of Mo’ Wax that working for Mo’Wax allowed him to discover how to use his creativity and helped him build his own career.
In 1998 Henry started his own company Modo with Tim Bevan, specialising in creating innovative packaging for music labels like Mute, Sony, EMI, as well as Mo’ Wax. One of their most popular products was created for The Simpsons Movie soundtrack, as Henry explained:
“It’s a cartoon plastic moulding shaped like a donut, but it’s the frosting on the top of it that people can’t leave alone — we made it scented like strawberry so it was close as possible to something Homer would eat.”
Other creative ideas included thermal reactive packaging for Muse, a Cyberman helmet case for a Doctor Who box set, and DVD/USB set inside a rubber wheel for Snoop Dogg.
In 2002 Modo’s Tim Bevan and Henry Lavelle partenered with Aiden Lavelle to start their own record label Algorhythm. The label released Aiden’s Vector 13 project with Alan Thompson as well as a few other groups, but shut down in 2005.
Mo’ Wax had also shut down by then, closing in 2002, and James Lavelle started a new label Surrender All which also included Surrender Arts, a reborn Mo’ Wax Arts, and Henry continued working with his brother through this venture.
Through Modo, Henry also continued to create packaging for UNKLE, including the special editions of the albums War Stories, Where Did The Night Fall and Another Night Out.
In 2016 Modo merged with Key Production and Henry founded a new company 88Create a few years later, where he continued working with packaging for the music industry. He also continued working with his brother James, more recently on UNKLE’s 2019 album The Road Part II and it’s follow up Rōnin.
Sadly, in February 2022 James Lavelle announced that Henry had died. In his tribute James wrote of their time together:
“Henry possessed an amazingly creative mind and helped me realise many of my artistic visions. We worked together closely, ever since the early days of Mo’ Wax where he manufactured and created the records and packaging for pretty much every record I’ve ever made or released.”
Henry Lavelle will be remembered as responsible for so many amazing deluxe editions of our favourite albums, whether they were special editions from new artists or the intricate packaging he created for anniversary reissues. Henry Lavelle didn’t have his name in the credits on a lot of these albums, but for those who knew him and his work, he will be missed.
