Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Deep Joy (1994)
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…
Deep Joy were Johnno Casson, Stuart Dace, and Charlie Rabicano, and were active between 1990–1996, releasing a handful of singles beginning in 1990 when they made their debut with Fall on Brainiak Records. Fall was produced by Andrew Weatherall who would go on to produce albums such as Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, and Beth Orton’s Trailer Park, and provided a remix of Fall for the 12" release.
Deep Joy released three further singles between 1991-1994, and the band were joined by additional members Vince Gibbs and Chad Page for some of these.
In 1994 Deep Joy released Make Some Sense Of This on Mo’ Wax Records, a song which features a slow build to what becomes a downtempo experiment of early Trip Hop, mixing Hip Hop beats, samples, and live instrumentation. While the song isn’t widely available now, it was uploaded to Soundcloud by Deep Joy several years ago, along with some of their other songs.
The 12" sold well, and in July 21 1994’s UK Singles Chart Make Some Sense Of This entered the Top 200 at #181, unfortunately dropping back out the following week. Make Some Sense Of This featured a remix and instrumental version of the title song as well as another song called Take which was more of a traditional pop song compared to Make Some Sense Of This.
Deep Joy released Take as its own single later in 1994, and were invited to Germany where they performed the song on TV as part of a promotional tour. Take was released in Germany by the record label Marlboro Music which often distributed German pressings of Mo’ Wax releases, and the label also released a promo video for the song. This partnership led to a contract for an album to be released by Marlboro Music and their parent label IDE which would arrive in 1996.
Unfortunately the album, The Booster, was only given a limited release, reportedly only made available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan. One single was released, also called The Booster, which entered the Tokio Hot 100 chart in Japan on June 8 1997 where it spent one week at #100 before dropping back out again. This was the final release for Deep Joy as following their album the band appear to have gone their seperate ways.
Johnno Casson has continued working in music following Deep Joy, and has released music under a number of different aliases, such as Snippet and Old Tramp. Songs from across his solo career were collected together on 2019’s Best of Johnno Casson, via Casson’s own Quirky Sounds Records. His music is available via Bandcamp, and in June 2020 he released a new song titled World Needs Changes in response to world events.
Casson also runs The Warm and Toasty Club in Colchester, Essex, where people over 60 share memories and come together to help battle loneliness and enjoy performances by emerging independent musicians. Casson’s work with the club recently led to a speaking engagement at the House of Lords and the clubs expansion to more venues thanks to extra funding.
Stuart Dace contributed saxophone on Primal Scream’s Screamadelica album, and in 2011 released a solo album as Lodekka. Dace is also a member of The Future Shape of Sound, a group which has been described as “a diva collective playing crime gospel and primitive blues…Recalling the heady psychedelic era of the 1960s and 70s.” Outside of music, Dace has also worked as a graphic designer for Chrysalis Records, contributing to releases by Blondie and Mixmaster Morris.
While both Stuart Dace and Johnno Casson have remained active, Charlie Rabicano appears to have left the music scene as there’s no record of his involevemnt following Deep Joy’s album release. Likewise it’s hard to find information on Vince Gibbs, who according to Discogs is the American producer Van Gibbs, but is referred to as Vince or Vincent by Casson on some recent public Facebook posts relating to Deep Joy. If either members did continue following music they don’t appear to have posted publicly about it in any online spaces.
As mentioned earlier, Deep Joy’s songs aren’t widely available outside of second hand stores, but some of their songs were uploaded to Soundcloud by Deep Joy several years ago, and Andy Weatherall’s remix of Deep Joy’s Fall is also on YouTube.
