Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Deborah Anderson (1997)
Mo’ Wax was a record label started by James Lavelle in 1992, which closed about ten years later. Initially they released 12" singles and licensed a compilation from Japan of Japanese Hip Hop, until 1994 when they began releasing albums of their artists original work. While some of these artists such as DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Money Mark continued releasing music after Mo’ Wax closed, others have seemingly disappeared from the music scene. In this series I will look at each artist on Mo’ Wax and try to find out where are they now…
Deborah Anderson began her career as a singer when she featured as backing vocalist on albums by her father Jon Anderson in the 1980’s and 90’s. These included contributions to solo albums from Jon Anderson as well as for the English progressive rock band Yes, which Jon Anderson was a founding member of.
During the mid-90’s Deborah Anderson stepped away from her role as a backing singer and released her solo song You Make Me Want To, which appeared on the compilation The Acid Jazz Test Part Two in 1994. You Make Me Want To also appeared on the soundtrack to The Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire, a Direct-To-Video horror movie starring Alyssa Milano which was released in early 1995.
But it was Deborah Anderson’s vocal contribution to Alex Reece’s Feel The Sunshine which really began to get her noticed. The song was released in late 1995, and in December it spent three weeks climbing the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #69. Feel The Sunshine later returned to the charts in 1996 when it was re-released on a remix EP, reaching #26, and it then featured on Alex Reece’s So Far album, which peaked at #19 in the UK Albums Chart.
In 1997 Feel The Sunshine was released in the USA, and Billboard highlighted it as their Critics Choice, writing: “Reece’s ambient keyboards and staccato beats are warmed by the presence of guest vocalist Deborah Anderson, who has a quality not unlike Bjork, but smoother and far more mainstream friendly.” Regarding her comparisons to Björk, Anderson later commented to Mixmag, “I hate comparisons…Hopefully, soon people will say ‘You sound like Deborah Anderson’.”
James Lavelle was one of the many people who had taken notice of Feel The Sunshine, and in 1996 he announced that he would be working with Anderson on the forthcoming UNKLE album. Lavelle had started recording UNKLE’s debut album in 1995, and by 1996 he had recorded songs with Money Mark, Kudo of Major Force, Rammellzee, and The Dust Brothers.
The UNKLE album ended up changing over the years, with Lavelle abandoning much of the sessions recorded prior to 1997, as the album instead became centred around the production work of DJ Shadow. Some of those early sessions were released, such as Money Mark and Kudo’s Berry Meditation, and Rammellzee and The Dust Brothers’ Rock On, but it is unclear whether any sessions with Deborah Anderson and UNKLE ever took place.
While she may not have released any music with UNKLE, Deborah Anderson was signed to Lavelle’s Mo’ Wax record label, and in 1997 Mo’ Wax released Anderson’s Lonely Without You. The release features several variations of the one song, including two remixes, instrumentals and a Radio Mix, and features production from Rich File and Illian Walker. Both File and Walker had also been working together on other projects for Mo’ Wax at this time, such as their collaboration on music for a Nike Air Promo CD. Illian Walker also released music as The Force on Mo’ Wax, while Rich File released music as DJ Aura and Forme, and would go on to join UNKLE.
Back in 1997, Deborah Anderson’s Lonely Without You was reviewed by Muzik in their September issue where they gave it 7/10 and said:
Anderson delivers a pair of melodic, if somewhat compilcated, songs. “Lonely Without You” is a laudable stab at vocal drum & bass while The Stereo MC’s “Sub Zero” mix fits the lass in more appropriate clothes with an achhingly ponderous downbeat groove, and far more pleasant it is too.
Mo’ Wax financed a promotional video for Lonely Without You, directed by Alex Orlowski, and it was entered into the Raindance Film Festival where it was selected as one of the festivals best videos. But while the song and video received praise, unfortunately Lonely Without You missed out on entering the UK Charts, peaking at #106 on September 5 1997, just outside of the Official Top 100 UK Singles Chart.
Deborah Anderson next appeared on DJ Krush’s MiLiGHT album in 1997, contributing vocals to the song Skin Against Skin. This was DJ Krush’s last album released by Mo’ Wax, and would become Deborah Anderson’s final appearance on Mo’ Wax as well, though at the time there was still hope for an album.
In their October 1997 issue, Mixmag announced that Deborah Anderson was working on her debut album, and they reported that DJ Shadow had offered to produce it. Anderson later listed DJ Shadow as someone she had previously collaborated with on music, but when a fan asked Shadow about this he clarified that while he had been asked to produce Anderson’s album for Mo’ Wax he had declined. DJ Shadow instead produced Psyence Fiction, the debut album from UNKLE which was released in 1998, and James Lavelle thanked Deborah Anderson in the albums linear notes.
In the late 1990’s fans continued sharing updates on Deborah Anderson’s debut album in user groups and on fansites, with a release expected sometimes in 1999. But in 2002 one fan reported that Anderson had “recently abandoned work on an album” and nothing else from this period was ever released. Behind the scenes issues at Mo’ Wax led to the label losing several of their artists in 1998, and the label eventually shut down, with the final Mo’ Wax release appearing in 2003.
While it is unknown what happened with Deborah Anderson’s album from this period, nothing outside of her song Lonely Without You was ever released by the label. But outside of Mo’ Wax, Deborah Anderson continued working on music, and in 2000 she appeared on The Critical Path, an album by Dave Tipper released under his Tipper alias, and in 2005 Anderson appeared on two songs from Télépopmusik’s album Angel Milk. Anderson discussed her work with Télépopmusik in Remix magazine’s June 2005 issue, telling them:
The musicians I’ve worked with before gave me a beat and said, “Make a song,”…Telepop gave me the most beautiful music. It was 10 minutes’ worth of music, and from that, I would try and write a three-minute song. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was, “Can you give me a longer piece of music to write to?”
I write with their sensibility in mind. Loads of times you find yourself having to please more than yourself. The more they developed the music around [my melodies], the more they wanted to define my melody or my lyric on top of that. I felt I was exactly what they were looking for.
Anderson wouldn’t release any new music for several years, instead focusing on photography until in 2009 when her debut album was released by Somissound. The album Silence was first released digitally in February 2009, followed by a CD in May, and both editions were accompanied by a booklet of “sensual black and white images” shot by Anderson for her photography book, Paperthin. The images featured “nude or semi-clothed subjects in 1930s settings, including Minnie Driver, Fergie, P!nk, Natasha Henstridge and Tilda Swinton.”
The album sessions for Silence had begun in 2005, with Anderson utilising Apple’s Garage Band software to record the albums ten songs. Silence featured a writing contribution by Tipper, and additional production from Somissound’s Erik Ryan Richards who had previously worked with Beck and Sukia’s Ross Harris. Regarding her music career, Deborah Anderson said in 2009:
To follow my father’s footsteps in being a singer–songwriter was an interesting thing…I am glad that I did a couple of his songs in Europe and recorded a couple of dance tracks. Though I was signed to A&M records in England, Dad didn’t do anything. What a lot of people perceive on the outside is a big fantasy. [Industry people] don’t hand you a golden key that will open all the doors. Dad was not in that kind of position when I decided to record…Since coming into (music) the first time, it has taken me 18 years to get to this place, where I can look at myself and think, “Yes, I am an artist.”
Since the release of Silence, Deborah Anderson appears to have put music behind her, as her website’s biography no longer mentions her music career. Now Deborah Anderson is better known for her photography and filmmaking, and since the release of Paperthin in 2009, she has published two more books of photography, exhibited around the world, and in 2013 directed her first feature film, Aroused. The film documents Anderson creating her photography book of the same name which featured “16 of the world’s most successful adult film stars” and “set out to change the public perception of female pornography stars.” The film received mixed reviews, with The New York Times suggesting it may have been better as a TV series.
Since then Anderson has continued to direct, and in 2020 she has released two documentaries, Women of the White Buffalo, and Raise the Vibration. Women of the White Buffalo follows the lives of eight Lakota women living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and had its debut at the 24th Red Nation International Film Festival in November 2019 where it won Best Documentary Feature. Photographic stills from the documentary were on display in galleries at the beginning of 2020, and Anderson has an online talk on her photography scheduled for October 2020.
While Deborah Anderson’s career as a filmmaker and photographer have taken off, the mystery over her Mo’ Wax days still remains. Did she record an album? Did she actually work with DJ Shadow? We may never know for sure, but even outside of her music work Deborah Anderson has had an interesting career. From initially documenting movie stars, all the way to her more recent work documenting the lives of indigenous peoples. Surely whatever Deborah Anderson decides to work on next will be a welcome suprise.
