Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Elliott Power (2015)
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…
The label Mo’ Wax put out what seemed to be their final release in 2003 before closing, but the label was briefly revived by James Lavelle in 2015 to release new music by Elliott Power including his debut album. Although the label was then retired once more, both Lavelle and Power have continued to collaborate since.
Elliott Power is an English musician who began his career rapping about a fictional life of crime on pirate radio station Laylow FM. He was 14 at the time and still trying to find his musical identity, and soon after met Dorian Lutz who showed Power his first recording studio, as he later exaplained.
“Dorian’s uncle had a small recording studio just off Askew Rd in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. Dorian had invited me down to the studio. I’d never been in a professional studio before, with a booth, mixing desk and proper mics and stuff, and here was this 14-year-old, tall skinny kid, Dorian — setting everything up, using a mixing desk and engineering the whole session. From that day, I knew he was a special talent.”
Power said it wasn’t until he was 21 that he started to take music seriously, and he then began sending out a demo tape he’d put together.
In 2013, Marathon Artists released Elliot Power’s debut single Sink / Swim as a limited 12" single. The label was started by Philippe Ascoli, Paul-Rene Albertini, and Jimmy Mikaoui in 2012, who signed Power and released his debut single as one of the label’s first releases.
As Power was finishing his debut album he reached out to James Lavelle to see if he would remix one of his tracks. Lavelle liked what he heard, and then Philippe Ascoli, an old friend of Lavelle’s, had the idea to revive Mo’ Wax and release Elliot Power’s music as a Marathon Artists / Mo’ Wax collaboration.
In the early 90s Ascoli had founded Source Records, the French label who signed AIR and collaborated with Mo’ Wax on their French distribution. They also released Source Lab Vs. Mo’ Wax featuring artists from both labels, and the Mo’ Wax compilation Faces Z.
James Lavelle was impressed Power knew so much about Mo’ Wax, as he told DEK during a recent interview:
“…[Elliot Power] knew about everything to do with Mo’ Wax and that whole period of time, but also all the references that Mo’ Wax had as well…all these other records, and the connections with streetwear and Japan.”
Elliot Power had heard several Mo’ Wax releases growing up, like DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing album, and was a fan of UNKLE, the artwork by Futura 2000, and Japanese brand BAPE. He later realised they were all connected to the same label, as he told Lodown.
“…I began to connect to dots, look back deeper into Mo’ Wax where I was actually familiar with acts on the roster like Dj Krush, Dj Shadow and Attica Blues through my parents. None of it was foreign. It was a world I already knew, understood and belonged to by accident.”
2014, the same year Lavelle and Power first connected, On The Windrush was released as Power’s second single and featured an Unkle remix. This was followed by Sword Souls (UNKLE Remix) which featured on James Lavelle’s Global Underground Naples mix CD in late 2015, and the first new Mo’ Wax release; a white label 12" for Elliot Power’s third single Murmur. James Lavelle also made a cameo in the songs video.
The debut album from Elliot Power Once Smitten was released in February 2016 with Ascoli credited as Senior A&R Director, Lavelle as A&R, and Lavelle and Power sharing the Creative Director role. His longtime collaborator Dorian Lutz also received credits across the album for variously mixing, producing, arranging, writing, programming, and singing on almost every track.
Prior to the album’s release, Elliot Power spoke about the Mo’ Wax collaboration and whether it would be continued.
“I’m still in my deal with Marathon so this is a Mo’Wax/Marathon collaboration release. so the cat numbers on vinyls are not a continuation of the existing Mo’wax cat numbers. (collab cat no: MWMA001 and so on) to be honest no plans have been discussed passed the point of my album, so I don’t know if James is relaunching Mo’Wax or continuing to collaborate with Marathon, he is unsure.”
At the time James Lavelle was preparing new music for UNKLE, and brought in Elliot Power and Dorian Lutz to collaborate with him. The first single Cowboys Or Indians was released digitally in 2016 and on vinyl in 2017. In August 2017 UNKLE released their new album The Road: Part I featuring Power and Lutz, the later who now goes by Mïnk or Miink.
Since then, they have both featured on every UNKLE album, including 2022’s Rōnin II remix album. Mo’ Wax hasn’t released any further music, and the partnership with Marathon Artists never went beyond Elliot Power’s debut album and singles, perhaps because Philippe Ascoli left the label in 2016.
Outside of his work with UNKLE, Elliott Power released a series of nine singles on Bandcamp between 2019–2020 on his own label ’til death do us part. He has also remained busy directing music videos and films, directing Eartheater’s Faith Consuming Hope in 2021, filmed in Kyiv and Miink’s Paper Doll in 2022. This year he was also nominated for an Emmy award for a commercial he co-directed for Meta.
Although a recent feature on James Lavelle and Miink’s partnership in DEK suggested Power was focused on directing now rather than music, beginning in August 2022 he again released a string of eleven singles on Bandcamp. These were then collected in November 2022 as The Grimace, a release Elliot Power is calling a mixtape though it is effectively his second album.
