Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Innervisions (1996)
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…
Jamie Spratling began releasing music under the name Dexxtrous in 1993 on Lemon D’s record label Planet Earth. Soon after meeting, Lemon D, aka Kevin King, convinced Jamie Spratling to go into a studio and make some music, as Spratling later explained:
I just went down there with loads of records and started messing around with beats..I didn’t have the first idea about what I was doing, but it came out alright…I never set out to make drum & bass…I just ended up making drum & bass tracks because you can fit so many styles into it.
The resulting track was The Choice, aka Six Million Ways To Die, which samples Bug In The Bassbin, Carl Craig’s Innerzone Orchestra debut from 1992. Spratling discussed his use of samples with Mixmag in 2020:
Sampling was far more common in the early days of production. The only way to find good samples was to either scour through a friend’s older brother’s collection or to go out and try and get your hands on the vinyl yourself. I used to sample snippets of tracks to get an idea or a hook then layer breakbeats and synth lines over it to create a fresh canvas. When I heard the percussion on ‘Bug In The Bass Bin’ I was hooked and when played at 45 rpm on a record deck the beats had a groove and just worked well subtly behind the classic Amen break. I made the track ‘The Choice’ In 92 at the age of about 14 and released it on my good friend Lemon D’s Planet Earth recordings, the track was also the first to sample the Cutty Ranks ‘6 Million Ways To Die’ vocal so two big samples on that record that I may not get away with now!
The Choice became an underground hit and Spratling soon began working with Doc Scott (aka Scott McIlroy), Dillinja (aka Karl Francis), and Goldie (aka Clifford Price). It was the later connection which really pushed Spratling’s career, as he renamed himself to J Majik and began releasing a series of 12" singles on Goldie’s Metalheadz label starting in 1995.
In 1996 Spratling started a new project under the name Innervisions, which was slightly slower in tempo. The songs were originally intended for Metalheadz but Goldie thought the more downtempo songs would be better suited for Mo’ Wax. James Lavelle had also heard an acetate of the songs and was interested in releasing them, and Innervisions’ Mermaids 12" was released by Lavelle’s Mo’ Wax label at the end of 1996.
The Mermaids 12" features two songs, Mermaids and Organized Crime, and artwork by REQ 1, aka Ian Cassar. This was REQ 1's final contribution to Mo’ Wax following artwork on 1994’s Royaltie$ Overdue compilation and releases from DJ Shadow and RPM.
Mermaids missed out on the UK Top 100 Singles Charts, only reaching #133 in October 1996. While Organized Crime was later featured on the Mo’ Wax compilation Headz 2A which reached #30 on the UK Compilations Chart Top 50 in November.
In a review from the time Muzik magazine gave Mermaids 3.5/5 and said:
With cuts released on premium labels such as Reinforced and Metalheadz, at the tender age of 19, J Majik seems to have done it all. Proving that he isn’t creatively exhausted, this sees him setting the bpms at 90 and submerging himself in marine sounds and sensurround vibrations.
1996 saw Innervisions also release a handful of 12" singles on labels such as Basement, Reinforced, and Spratling’s own Infrared label which he had started in 1993. Mermaids was Spratling’s only release on Mo’ Wax, with the songs licensed from Infrared, and both songs were later collected and re-released for J Majik’s debut album Slow Motion in 1997. 1997 also saw the final new Innervisions release, with a song called Select appearing on DJ Stretch’s Enforcers (The Beginning Of The End) mix.
It would be over ten years before a follow up album from J Majik appeared, but in the intervening period Spratling continued to release music, collaborating with Kathy Brown, DJ Sense, and Andrew Parsons’ Wickaman project.
After being quiet for several years, in 2017 Spratling teamed with Lee Harmony (aka DJ Harmony) to relaunch Deep Jungle, a record label which Harmony had originally started in 1994. One of the labels new releases was a 12" of two unreleased J Majik songs from 1995, which saw him getting invites to DJ again after a long abscense. Then in 2018 Infrared was also relaunched with an unreleased Innervisions song from the mid 1990’s as the labels first release.
Speaking to In Reach Magazine in 2019, Spratling explained the reason behind the long delay between releases was due to a contract he signed which inadvertently led to him not being allowed to release any music for four years. This had led to him efectively retiring from music, but after he started DJing again Spratling realised he wanted to return to production, and soon after their were new releases from his J Majik alias.
2019 saw the release of the second J Majik album Full Circle, closely followed in 2020 with the release of his third album Always Be, and a series of mixes for BBC Radio 1, and Mixmag, as well as a remix of Joris Voorn’s Messiah.
With so much new music arriving you’d be forgiven for thinking Spratling was due for another break, but in August 2020 he replied to a J Majik fan on Twitter, telling them there was still “More music coming”.
