Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: La Funk Mob (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…
La Funk Mob were the French Hip Hop duo Hubert Blanc-Francard and Philippe Cerboneschi, aka Philippe Zdar, who met in 1986 and later began working together on music for MC Solaar. The pair both contributed to MC Solaar’s debut album, 1991’s Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo, where Philippe Zdar is credited for mixing, and Hubert Blanc-Francard (appearing under the name Pigale Boom Bass) is credited for co-producing the album and co-writing several songs.
La Funk Mob made their debut as remixers for MC Solaar’s Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo (Rio Heat Mix) released in 1991, and their Caroline remixes, from 1992. The Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo (Rio Heat Mix) saw its UK debut thanks to a promo on Gilles Peterson’s Talkin Loud record label in 1992, with MC Solaar also appearing on a Talkin Loud compilation in unremixed form the same year.
In 1993 La Funk Mob released their first solo songs as a group, creating Intro and Instru Pour Le Mental which open and close Jimmy Jay’s Les Cool Sessions, released on Source, a French record label founded by Philippe Ascoli while he worked as Head of A&R at Virgin France. Ascoli had joined Virgin in 1992 after leaving Polydor where he signed MC Solaar, and Source was eventually officially announced as part of Virgin France in 1995. But prior to this they put out several releases, such as Hubert Blanc-Francard’s younger brother Sinclair’s Que Justice Soit Faite ! which also featured production and contributions from Blanc-Francard and Zdar.
As Zdar tells it, La Funk Mob was originally Blanc-Francard and he had sent his music to James Lavelle at Mo’ Wax. Lavelle had liked his MC Solaar instrumentels but wanted to release them in a longer and clubbier style. Blanc-Francard enlisted Zdar and they sent Lavelle Motor Bass Get Phunked Up. In 2018 Zdar would explain how he met James Lavelle in London soon after:
I’d gone to London once to buy vinyl, and Hubert gave me James’ number to call him once I got there. So I did, and he said “Thanks for calling! I just received “Motor Bass Get Phunked Up” in the mail and it sounds great! “, and I was like, “Oh thanks. I just finished it the other day and mailed it over “. He invited me to the label offices to meet him and that was the start of our relationship. That was at a time when French electronic music was blowing up thanks to the hype from countries like England. Nowadays, everyone is used to seeing electronic musicians from France being successful, but back then we didn’t really have a global presence. So it was exciting for me and Hubert to be a part of an internationally-known label like Mo’ Wax.
1994 saw La Funk Mob’s Mo’ Wax debut, with Tribulations Extra Sensorielles quickly followed by Casse Les Frontières, Fou Les Têtes En L’Air (aka Breaking Boundaries Messing Up Heads E.P.) both releasing that year, with Casse Les Frontières, Fou Les Têtes En L’Air featuring remixes of Ravers Suck Our Sound and Motor Bass Get Phunked Up by Carl Craig and Richie Hawtin, as well as further remixes by La Funk Mob themselves.
Zdar explained the remix EP’s origin to Red Bull in 2004,
So when we were doing La Funk Mob with Mo’ Wax he [James Lavelle] told us, “We have to do a remix, who do you think can do a remix?” James Lavelle never knew Detroit techno. Me, I was into Detroit techno only, I was a pure raver and everything. So I had two heroes at this time, who were Richie Hawtin and Carl Craig. So I said to the guy, “Call Richie Hawtin or Carl Craig, ask them.” And they were like, “Who are they?” They were not known at this time, so we called them and they said “yes” and they did the remix…For me I think the Richie Hawtin remix is his best remix. He is very good at production, but the remix I think is one of the best he’s done.
All Music felt that Tribulations Extra Sensorielles was a highlight of Mo’ Wax’s entire output, describing the EP as “clean trip-hop and electro minimalism”, with Ravers Suck Our Sound noted as thestandout track. The Wire was in agreement, also citing Ravers Suck Our Sound as the best track, describing it as gesturing “towards that space between The Orb and Cypress Hill.”
La Funk Mob would next contribute to two albums by The Mighty Bop in 1995, released on Yellow Productions in France, a record label founded by Bob Sinclair. The group would then lay dormant outside of some remix work until 2004 when a compilation of La Funk Mob’s discography was released in France titled The Bad Seeds 1993–1997.
It wasn’t that Blanc-Francard and Zdar had stopped working together, rather they had changed their name, and were now known as Cassius. The new name had its debut in 1996 with the song Foxy Lady. Initially this was self-released as a 12", simply titled “L’H0mme Qui Valait 3 Milliard$ presente Foxy Lady pr0duit par b00m bAss et zdAr” (The Three Billion Dollar Man present Foxy Lady, produced by BoomBass and Zdar) before being released properly by Virgin under the Cassius name.
Cassius released their debut album on Virgin in 1999, also titled 1999, and they stuck with the name from then on.
1999 had done well, but received mixed reviews, with Pitchfork telling readers not to bother with it, and the BBC explaining that while there were some stand out tracks it could become monotonous. The album reached #28 in the UK Album Charts, spending five weeks in the Top 100, while the 1999 single also entered the UK Singles Charts, reaching #7 and spending a total of nine weeks in the Top 100. Several songs from the album also charted in the Dance Club Songs chart in the USA, but Cassius never broke the Billboard Top 200. Meanwhile in France 1999 spent six weeks in their Top 100 Albums Charts, reaching #31, while the 1999 single spent nineteen weeks in the Top 100 Singles Chart and peaked at #17.
For their follow up, Au Rêve, Cassius found their popularity drop as musical tastes had changed from the French Touch to The Strokes. While Cassius had been interviewed around 120 times for their 1999 album, for Au Rêve the group spent one day doing interviews, and as Red Bull explained, “Four journalists appeared to interview the duo in the Virgin offices. There was a representative from a magazine, a fanzine and two websites. It was over in just one hour.”
Outside of their own releases, Hubert Blanc-Francard and Philippe Zdar also worked together with other musicians. Zdar produced Melaaz Bennacer’s debut album in 1995 while Blanc-Francard contributed writing. Cassius are also credited as contributing production on OneRepublic’s albums Native in 2013 and Oh My My in 2016, and in 2012 Cassius had been working with Uffie on her second album, the follow up to 2010’s Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans, until Uffie scrapped the album entirely and left music behind for several years.
But Blanc-Francard and Zdar also had lives apart from each other, and both members had found success in their careers outside of Cassius and La Funk Mob.
Hubert Blanc-Francard, who produces under the name Boom Bass earned his initial studio credits contributing vocals to his father’s, Dominique Blanc-Francard, debut album Ailleurs. Dominique Blanc-Francard worked on several abums for Serge Gainsbourg during the later part of his career, including his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg’s debut, Charlotte For Ever, released in 1986. This album was also one of Hubert Blanc-Francard’s earliest credits, with Dominique recording vocals, and Hubert assisting. The father and son again teamed up on Serge Gainsbourg’s 1986 Live album, with Hubert assisting his father in his role as engineer.
Hubert Blanc-Francard continued working in the studio, and in 1991 co-produced MC Solaar’s debut album alongside Jimmy Jay. Blanc-Francard would continue working with MC Solaar until his 1998 live album Le Tour de la Question, following he and Zdar’s work on MC Solaar’s 1998 self titled fourth album. Outside of his work with MC Solaar and La Funk Mob, Hubert Blanc-Francard released a single under the name Supabeatpusher in 1997, remixed Phoenix, and also contributed writing and production to Atlantique Khanh’s 1994 Atlantique album, which also features a contribution from Zdar. In 2009 he performed a live soundtrack to the silent films of Georges Méliès, ending the performance with a soundtrack to Voyage dans la Lune.
Philippe Zdar, began his studio career as a tea boy, before working his way up to sound engineer and mixer. His first job had been assisting in the recording of a live album for Jane Birkin, and he then worked with Serge Gainsbourg on Gainsbourg’s wife Bambou’s Made In China album from 1989. For these jobs he assisted Dominique Blanc-Francard, and it was this connection which led to him meeting Dominique’s son Hubert Blanc-Francard.
Later, during studio downtime while recording MC Solaar, Zdar began experimenting with making House music and started the group Motorbass in 1992 with Etienne de Crecy. Motorbass released their first 12" in 1993, Transphunk EP, which contains one song produced by Hubert Blanc-Francard, La Doctoresse, which would later be re-released as a La Funk Mob song on Mo’ Wax in 1994. Motorbass earned a shoutout on Daft Punk’s Da Funk 12" from 1995, where the band had printed a list of groups they gave “much respects to”, which included Motorbass alongside artists such as Prince, Dr Dre, and James Brown. Upon discovering this, Zdar met with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, and Motorbass remixed Daft Punk’s Around The World in 1997.
Motorbass released their debut album Pansoul in 1996, which earned them 5/5 stars in Muzik, and the album is widely credited as kickstarting the “French Touch” craze which was taken up by Daft Punk etc. When Zdar and de Crecy sat down to discuss a follow up record, de Crecy played some music to Zdar which he had been working on. Zdar was enthusiastic until it was revealed that this was intended for a solo album which de Crecy would release under his Super Discount alias, and so Zdar moved on to Cassius. Though de Crecy would later recall that it was Zdar who left Motorbass to record Cassius’ 1999 album when they had been meant to record the next Motorbass album, regardless the second album wasn’t recorded. In 2003 Pansoul was re-issued and re-packaged with their early singles, and at the time Zdar told Muzik that Motorbass were working on a new album, though nothing ever came out.
Philippe Zdar has also contributed to other projects through his career, such as Nadja, Club 75, La Chatte Rouge, and released his own tracks under the alias A Bass Day, as well as solo singles as Philippe Zdar. But Zdar had also become known for his mixing and studio skills, after he purchased a studio in 2000 and spent five years renovating it. In a feature from The New York Times in 2015 they revealed his studio, named Motorbass Studio, was the same one where Hubert Blanc-Francard’s father had worked with Serge Gainsbourg in the 1980’s. After completing renovations Zdar used the studio to produce Phoenix’s 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which won a Grammy award. Zdar would work with Chromeo, The Rapture, Beastie Boys, Franz Ferdinand, Lou Doillon, and Cat Power, while the studio was also used for albums by Bloc Party, Mr Oizo, Justice, and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
While both members were working on their solo careers, they had also continued working together as Cassius, with four albums released prior to the release of Dreems in 2019. This was a return to form for the group, which Pitchfork would later write was possibly their best work, but was unfortunately also their last album. Two days prior to the album release, Philippe Zdar died in an accident. At the time there was an outpouring of tributes from the music community, which showed how far Zdar and his music had reached. Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle released the following statement at the time:
I’m deeply saddened and shocked by the news of the passing of Philippe Zdar. A beautiful, talented and original soul. Originally one half of La Funk Mob, he helped shape the Mo’ Wax sound and truly pioneered the mixing of club genres, fusing hip-hop, house and techno into something truly new and exciting. I remember the first time I heard the demo of Motor Bass Get Phunked Up it blew my mind. One of those moments when you know something truly amazing is about to happen! It resulted in one of the greatest moments in electronic music, with Richie Hawtin’s remix of the track. He went on to create some of the best and most loved records across so many genres over the past 25 years.
Forever missed and loved.
RIP my friend.
While the bands popularity fluctuated, Cassius had continued to chart in France since their debut, with only Au Rêve not making the Top 50 in the Album Charts. But following the death of Zdar in 2019, Cassius songs’ entered the iTunes Charts around the world, with their 1999 album reaching #56 in the UK and #8 in France, while in France several Cassius songs charted, including Toop Toop (peaking at #4), I < 3 U So (peaking at #7), and Cassius 1999 (Radio Edit) (peaking at #20). In France Cassius’ fifth album Dreems also made it into the French Top 100 Album Charts where it peaked at #30, their highest performance in the French Album Charts to date.
In 2020 a Cassius remix of Fiorious’ 2019 single I’m Not Defeated was released, which had been completed prior to Zdar’s death, and in 2019 Blanc-Francard released a special Cassius remix as a final show of respect to Zdar. Outside of these two remixes and Cassius’s Dreems album, no new music has been released or announced since Zdar’s death.
From La Funk Mob to Cassius, both Hubert Blanc-Francard and Philippe Zdar left behind an amazing contribution to music, and while Blanc-Francard will hopefully continue to produce new music, Zdar’s contributions will be missed, and it is unfortunate to think that Cassius ended just when they were returning to their peak.
