Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Howie B / Olde Scottish / Skelf (2002)
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…
Howard Bernstein, better known as Howie B, is a Scottish musician who grew up in Glasgow surrounded by a diverse selection of musical influences. During the 1980’s he began hanging out with Jazzy B of Soul II Soul, and took on a studio apprenticeship with film composer Stanley Myers. Under Myers, Howie B mixed Hans Zimmer’s Paperhouse soundtrack album in 1988, and then used his new studio skills for Soul II Soul’s 1989 album Club Classics Vol. One, where Howie is credited as engineer for two tracks.
Following an assortment of further studio credits Howie B was offered a record deal with Island and he joined with Diane Charlemagne and Tony Campbell to form Nomad Soul. In 1991 they released the single Candy Mountain and an album was recorded, but before a planned second single could be released they were dropped by the label as the album had gone over budget. Undeterred, Howie B continued working in studios, and contributed to songs such as East 17’s I Want It, and Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy. Things really began to change though when he met Major Force’s Toshio Nakanishi and Masayuki Kudo in 1992. Better known as Toshi and Kudo, the pair had recently moved to London from Japan, and after connecting with Howie B they enlisted him to remix a song for Melon’s Deep Cut Remix, the first of many collaborations between the three.
In 1993 Howie set up Pussyfoot Records and in December of that year he released Breathe In, the first Howie B solo 12", as well as the first release on Pussyfoot. By 1994 Howie was already being hailed as “one of the most innovative and exciting producers in the UK”, thanks to a string of recent collaborations, including several appearances on James Lavelle’s recently started Mo’ Wax Records. These included the release of Have Mercy as Howie B Inc., Martian Economics (Unified Plant Theory) in collaboration with Toshi and Kudo, a remix of UNKLE, and two songs on the compilation Headz, one as Howie B, and the other as Olde Scottish. 1994 also saw the debut of Skylab, a group project which brought together Howie, Toshi, Kudo, and Mat Ducasse, who released three singles and an album in 1994 on L’Attitude Records.
1995 saw a further appearance on Mo’ Wax, with Wildstyle released under Howie’s Olde Scottish alias and featuring DJ Krush on turntables. The song was a cover of Subway Theme from the graffiti film Wildstyle, and marked the final release by Howie under his Olde Scottish alias. That same year Howie worked on Original Soundtracks 1, an album from Passengers, a super group featuring Brian Eno and U2, after which Howie was invited to contribute to U2’s next album. Howie would spend a year in Dublin playing records to the band, selecting samples, inspiring their sound, and giving them “a direct line into club culture”, with the album Pop eventually releasing in 1997, and spending forty-five weeks in the UK Charts, peaking at #1.
While he was working with U2, the first solo album from Howie B was released in 1996 by Polydor, with the ambient Music For Babies recorded over eighteen days, inspired by the birth of Howie’s daughter Chilli. The album featured artwork from Icelandic artist Húbert Nói and Major Force’s Toshi, and was accompanied by a short animated film by Run Wake and a series of short stories by Michael Benson. Music For Babies was later described by The Face as “his widely panned ambient debut”, though upon release it did see some positive reviews from magazine such as Muzik and Frontpage. But Howie took note of the criticism, and his next album Turn The Dark Off was more beat orientated, with Howie commenting on the change:
So many people complained at me about the last album: (adopts whining voice) ‘Why did you make an ambient album, why are there no beats?” I thought, fuck it! If they want beats, I’ll give them beats. The last album was difficult, although it was the album I wanted to make at that time.
The new album saw Howie’s first appearance in the UK Album Charts, with Turn The Dark Off reaching #58, while three singles from the album entered the UK Singles Top 100, with Angels Go Bald: Too peaking at #36 and also reaching #39 in the Scottish Singles Charts.
Snatch, the third solo album from Howie B, arrived in 1999, with Howie describing it as a reflective album, where he pushed himself to get back to basics. Prior to the release of Snatch Howie had worked on a series of collaborations, including assisting Ry Cooder on The End Of Violence soundtrack, producing an album for Sly & Robbie, working with Björk on several of her albums, and collaborating with U2 on their Pop album and PopMart tour. He would explain:
I had been working with so many other different people that I just had to sit down and think where the fuck I’m actually coming from…So [while creating Snatch]…I put myself in a situation where I couldn’t call on anybody else to help me express myself. I wrote everything on this album I programmed it, produced it, mixed it. Everything. It’s all my own work.
Snatch was released on Howie’s Pussyfoot label, which was also releasing several themed compilations, such as the Spy themed Pussy Galore in 1996, and the pornography themed Suck It And See in 1998, which itself inspired a soft-core porn film directed by Jacob Pander. Albums such as these led Miles Ahead to call Pussyfoot “music’s coolest cats” who released “some of the most influential underground music of the ~9Os”. The label’s sound was hard to define, and Howie was proud of the eclectic collection of releases Pussyfoot had put out, explaining:
When I was first buying records I used to make a point of picking up all the stuff on labels like Rough Trade. I loved the idea that you never knew what you were going to get. I like the fact that everything on Pussyfoot is different. That’s a vibe I definitely want to keep.
At the time of Snatch’s release in 1999, Howie spoke about why he released the album on Pussyfoot as apposed to as part of his Island/Polydor contract, who had released his two previous albums. He explained:
I would have been unhappy with the way they would have handled this one. I’ve got no complaints about what went on with the first and second albums. There are growing pains and that’s fine, but Snatch was of a completely different nature. It’s not a commercial album. It’s not going to jump into the charts. It’s not going to have any great commercial success. So, there’s no point. I know what Island and Polydor want from me. And I want them to be an asset to me as much as I’m an asset to them. I don’t think Snatch would have been an asset to them, but it is an asset to Pussyfoot because of its size and nature.
Snatch didn’t enter the UK charts, and his previous album Turn The Dark Off marks Howie’s only appearance in the UK Album Charts to date. Snatch was followed by Folk in 2001, which featured Howie B singing for the first time, and was also his final album for Polydor, with the label reportedly unhappy with Folk’s lack of commercial possibilities, calling it too obscure.
That same year while touring across Europe in 2001, Howie began playing some new songs he’d been working on in the hope of gauging a reaction, and following a good response from the crowds he went into his studio to record them. The first of these new songs Coming At Ya arriving in January 2002, and were released under the alias Skelf (Scottish for splinter) on Mo’ Wax, with the label happily announcing that “Howie B, one of the original Mo’ Wax artists, is back on the label with his latest project”.
Recorded live and in one take, Coming At Ya was seen as a change in direction for Howie B, as the new songs were created with a stripped back studio set up featuring no samplers. Howie described Skelf as “all banging electro-house stuff”, and discussed the project in detail with Sound On Sound, telling them:
Skelf is all electronic, and is just made using simple sound sources: one drum machine, two synths and two step sequencers. It’s about making very little sound very big. I’m using such a minimal amount of gear so I can focus more on the groove, and less on the gear and the machines. I get fed up with so much gear. There are so many things around, and it seems like people are taking technology much too seriously…
Beginning as live improvisations, Skelf’s Coming At Ya was recorded in Howie’s Chilli Mobile studio, and was followed by a second 12" Fish in August, with both featuring illustrations by Kostas Seremetis on their covers, similarly designed but with different colours. Coming At Ya featured four new songs, while Fish had three, including the song I Can’t Comprehend with vocals contributed by Rich File who at that point was also recording UNKLE’s second album with James Lavelle.
A third Skelf 12" single was planned, with an album collecting the singles intended for a Christmas 2002 releases, but only the two Mo’ Wax singles ever saw release, and no album or further Skelf songs have appeared. At this point Mo’ Wax was closing down, and likewise in 2003 Pussyfoot shut down, with Howie B’s next album Last Bingo In Paris released by the French label MK2 Music in 2004.
Though he had no record label, Howie continued making new music, and after collaborating on albums as a member of Two Culture Clash, Beautiful, and Mayonnaise, Howie produced Casino Royale’s Reale in 2006 (and also later remixed the entire album), and in 2007 he released Music For Astronauts And Cosmonauts, an album created with Húbert Nói, who had provided the painting for Howie’s debut album Music For Babies. Howie B’s next solo album wouldn’t arrive until 2010 with the release of Good Morning Scalene and this was quickly followed in 2013 by his most recent solo album Down With The Dawn, released on Howie’s new, though short lived, label HB Recordings.
Howie B re-opened his label Pussyfoot in 2018 and made most of their back catalogue available again online. The relaunch also saw new releases, such as the double album compilation Space Is The Plaice which featured Major Force Productions, Palm Skin Productions, and Skylab, alongside newer signings to the label such as Ninna Lundberg and Milo Clare. The album also featured a new song from Howie B, A Letter From Space, featuring actor Norman Reedus, known for his role in The Walking Dead television series.
2019 saw three new Howie B songs released, beginning with Harmonica featuring Norman Reedus, Brass Is Brass a collaboration with Austrian artist Tofa aka Chris Noelle, and finally That’s Down featuring scratches from Chinese DMC Champion DJ Wordy. Later, in 2020 Howie also featured on Warriors Of The Dystotheque’s No Borders, a charity single in support of Black Minds Matter, while Pussyfoot has continued releasing music from new artists such as the recent debut from Devils Of Moko.
Regarding a new Howie B album, Howie told Gonzai in 2018 that he had one half finished, and described it as “kind of like a new Howie B, a rebirth”. Although at the time Howie hoped to have the album released in mid-2019, he also acknowledged he spends a lot of his time producing other artists and working on Pussyfoot, so in 2021 we can still hope there is some new Howie B just around the corner.
