Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Sukia (1997)
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…
Sukia was formed in 1994 by Ross Harris in California, USA, before he was joined by Craig Borrell, Sasha Fuentes, and Grace Marks (later Henry Marks). Harris described Sukia as a side project he worked on during his career as a video director, telling Billboard in 1996, “It was a sidelight, and then it hijacked me for a while”.
The band name came from the Italian erotic vampire comic Sukia, and as Harris explained to Rolling Stone in their November 14 1996 issue, Sukia initially started as the band trying to create a soundtrack to the comic, described as “sex music you can dance to”.
In September 1996 Sukia’s debut album Contacto Espacial Con El Tercer Sexo (Space Contact With The Third Sex) was released on Nickelbag Records, a new label started by The Dust Brothers. The Dust Brothers’ Mike Simpson told Los Angeles Magazine in 1997 that, “Part of the reason we released the Sukia album…is because we thought it was really cool and we knew that no other label would be invested in the group.” The Dust Brothers produced one song on the album, The Dream Machine, while the rest of the album was produced by Jerry Finn.
Mitchell Frank of Nickelbag Records spoke to The Los Angeles Times in 1996 about why they signed Sukia, explaining: “I thought it was the newest, most unusual and totally absurd thing I’d heard in a long time…when we signed them, we didn’t think we would sell a lot of records. We didn’t care, either.”
Contacto Espacial Con El Tercer Sexo sold 1,500 copies, which came as a shock to the label, and the album was soon licensed to Mo’ Wax in England where it was released in 1997. The Mo’ Wax version of Contacto Espacial Con El Tercer Sexo featured four bonus tracks, remixes of their song Dream Machine which had previously been released by Nickelbag Records in 1996 as a CD single. The Mo’ Wax press release featured images from the Sukia comic, and described Sukia as, “a kind of mix between Money Mark crashing into the B-52’s in an outergalactic soundclash!”
The Times, London, in their October 4 1997 issue, described Sukia’s album as “outrageously funny — messed-up samples and rockabilly guitar recorded with the levels all wrong.” Select gave it 3/5 and felt while their were “patches of brilliant kitch…the in-joke tires”, and The Guardian also gave it 3/5 in their June 6 1997 issue, where they described the album as “…a collision of easy listening, hip-hop, synth-pop and experimental music interspersed with random interludes of strangeness”. In Australia, The Age newspaper gave Sukia’s album 4/5 in their August 2 1998 issue, and described it as:
…pseudo-camp 72-minute trippy debut…So alien it out-weirds Frank Zappa, the soundscape mixes eerie trombone, drum machine, church organ, moog synthesizer and surf guitar with amusing vocals. Sources include US TV shows, commercials, porn videos and the NASA moon landing…Handle with care.
Outside of samples, Sukia used a large collection of older instruments while making the album, which Harris found at “thrift stores, swap meets, and pawnshops”, describing the equipment as “…cheap, and even if it’s not cheap, I got it for cheap.”
Their live shows would include the use of instruments such as two Moog Prodigy’s, an ARP Axxe, Casiotone Sampler, Roland Spech Echo, “Congas, Bongos, Trumpet, Flute and various Percussion”, and in 1996 Billboard described Sukia’s shows as “a dicey affair”, due to the bands older equipment sometimes failing. Harris explained, “On a good night, we play seven songs, and four will come off, and there’s three misfires…When it pays off, it’s fun.”
The Los Angeles Times were not fans, and when reviewing a live set they stated, “…the live performance meandered, upsetting the balance of these elements, and the 30-minute set was rarely compelling.” Their live shows were further given notoreity by appearances from a naked saxophone player, and the band dressing up to antagonise their audience, such as wearing KKK costumes to poke fun at a room of right-wing frat boys.
In September 1997 Gary Super Macho was released as a single by Mo’ Wax and Nickelbag, and featured three remixes of Gary Super Macho. Alongside The Dust Brothers remix, the single also featured remixes by Major Force West, and DJ Me DJ You, an alias for Sukia’s Craig Borrell and Ross Harris. Regarding the remixes Harris told The Independent, “You know what? I don’t like any of them…We asked the Dust Brothers to pump it up, make it bombastic…It’s all right”.
The Mo’ Wax press release announced, “Warm up the condoms. But don’t dim the lights”, and described the single as:
…hugely endowed…Giving us more sexy Spanish trashy comic madness that alters your mood with each twist and turn. Stretching the boundries of bizzare, Beck’s favourite band Sukia, take you on a rollercoaster ride of moogs, samples and warped thrash guitar.
The reference to Beck was no coincidence, as not only did Sukia and Beck tour together, with Beck occasionally joining Sukia to perform live synths, but Beck and Ross Harris had actually known each other for years. Before Sukia formed, Harris worked as a photographer and video director, with credits including Beck’s 1994 album Mellow Gold, where Harris photographed the album cover and directed the video for Fuckin with My Head (Mountain Dew Rock). Beck is also the godfather of Harris’ son, and in 1996 Beck headlined a benefit concert where half of the proceeds went to the charity Cure Autism Now, and the other half to a fund set up for Harris’ son who has autism.
In 1998 Sukia’s video for Gary Super Macho was nominated for Best New Artist Clip in the Dance category at the 1998 Billboard Music Video Awards, which they didn’t win, and Gary Super Macho became Sukia’s final release. But the band also collaborated with other artists for a short period, and Sukia produced two songs, Aquamosh and Monster Truck, on Mexican Hip Hop group Plastilina Mosh’s 1998 Aquamosh album, after The Dust Brothers suggested them for the job. Ross Harris and Craig Borrell also contributed to Titan’s 1999 Elevator album, after Titan travelled to Los Angeles to work with Sukia.
While Sukia haven’t released another album since their debut, one was teased as early as December 1996 when The Los Angeles Times revealed the band was working on their follow up. Later in 1998, when Nickelbag Records merged with Disney’s Mammoth Records to create Ideal Records, Billboard reported that Sukia would be moved to Ideal for future releases, but nothing ever came out.
According to the bands old MySpace page there were further releases planned, as it explained: “The second album “You Think You Really Want This?” or “Big American Cock” has not been released. The EP-length soundtrack for a movie by the director Eric Sachs, is unreleased as well.” Sukia’s final new releases were the songs Zoooom!, which appeared on the compilation Pop Romantique — French Pop Classics in 1999, and Blang (For The Sports Minded), which appeared on the 2002 compilation The Men From O.R.G.A.N..
Harris later discussed Sukia with Punk Globe and he explained the lack of a second album:
We recorded a lot of stuff, but to be honest we really kind of lost our original focus. I think we became overly ambitious and stopped doing what worked so well with Sukia in the first place. On the first album we really were trying to create a soundtrack to the comic book. We went away from that idea and ended up with really messy results. A lot of that is my fault to be honest. But I am sure there is some worthwhile recordings. We just need to go have another listen and see. My problem is I get bored easily and move on to the next thing. I’m so busy with new projects that I don’t have the time to look back. But I am sure I will eventually.
In 2012 their debut was listed at #70 on iO9’s 100 Albums Every Science Fiction and Fantasy Fan Should Listen To. Cyriaque Lamar wrote:
The band Sukia — who named themselves after the eponymous antihero of a 1970s Italian vampire erotica comic — only released a single album of sinister, mostly wordless exotica. Fortunately, this underrated classic was produced by the Dust Brothers, the duo behind Beck’s Odelay and the Beastie Boys’ Paul Boutique. Peppered with drive-in movie noises, no-budget keyboard farts, and surf guitar to spare, Contacto is an aural party at Roger Corman’s beach house. This record sounds the way a $1 VHS bin should smell.
That same year Sukia performed at Bloomfest in LA, and later reappeared in 2016 performing live again, and they have made irregular appearances since.
While the bands old MySpace page listed almost twenty members and contributors over the bands existence, the primary members were Harris, Craig Borrell, Sasha Fuentes, and Grace/Henry Marks.
Following Sukia, Ross Harris and Craig Borrell’s DJ Me DJ You project released two albums, starting with 2000’s Rainbows And Robots which Billboard called, “a musical collage…this album consists of earbiting, colorful, and contradicting pieces that manage to maintain hidden unity and meaning.” The pair also released music as The Inner Thumb, with their 1999 album Soul Ecstasy (Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) a fake soundtrack to a non-existent movie. Outside of making music, Harris has continued his career as a photographer and video director, and across his career he has worked with musicians such as Sudan Archives, Beck, and Elliot Smith and brands including Uber, Levi’s, and Apple.
Both Craig Borrell and Sasha Fuentes provided contributions to DJ Me DJ You and were later the sole Sukia members credited as part of the bands appearance in 2017 on ex-Stereolab member Morgane Lhote’s Hologram Teen’s album Between The Funk And The Fear, contributing to the song God(d) of Thunder vs. Sukia. Not much else is known about their respective careers, while Henry Marks changed careers post-Sukia and now runs a business as a Wetplate Photographer.
But even though its members are mostly a mystery, Sukia lives on, and in August 2020 Sukia performed a live show which was streamed over Twitch and also featured Money Mark. The band have also teased new music on their Facebook, and according to a post from March 2020 Sukia are currently working on their next album. They also previously said in February 2019 “We have new songs to press an LP and will have digital downloads coming soon”, so only time will really tell when we might hear from Sukia again.
