Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Twig Bud / Peter Ford (1995)
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…
In 1995 Mo’ Wax created a spin-off label called Excursions. It put out ten 12" singles which were then collected onto a compilation album, also called Excursions, and released by Mo’ Wax in 1996.
Peter Adshead, aka Peter Ford aka Baby Ford, is an English DJ and producer. He has released one EP as Twig Bud, his only release for Mo’ Wax.
The first Baby Ford releases came out on Rhythm King in 1988, with the Acid House singles Chikki Chikki Ahh Ahh and Oochy Koochy then collected onto his debut album Ford Trax. Oochy Koochy, though it had limited radio play, was the first of four singles Baby Ford had enter the UK Charts inside the Top 75 between 1988 and 1990, with Children Of The Revolution from his second album ‘Ooo’ The World Of Baby Ford peaking the highest at #53.
For his third album BFORD 9 in 1992, Ford moved to Rhythm King’s sublabel Insumision, and then founded his own label Ifach in 1993.
Ford had been DJing at Nude, a club in London, and met up with fellow DJ Mark Broom who he asked to DJ at his club. They began producing together, and founded Ifach which debuted with Baby Ford’s Monolense 12" in 1994, mixed by Mark Broom.
They would collaborate further on an untitled 12" which was also the debut of Pure Plastic, a label founded by Mark Broom and his collaborater Dave Hill. But Broom and Ford kept most of their collaborations on Ifach, and released music as Perbec, Brubaker, Casino Classix, El Mal, and Solcyc, with each new alias’ releases featuring Ifach’s distinctive minimal design. None of the singles have cover art, and the labels are equally sparse with only the logo colours changing occasionally. Ford would later explain why this was, when discussing the label in 1997:
“Obviously the music’s the most important thing — for us it’s enough — but we wanted the label’s identity to be distinctive without being too in your face. It’s more laziness than anything else, we just don’t want to deal with all that information. But it’s good because it allows the label to develop without the attention being focused on unnecessary details.”
Ifach’s minimal design stood in stark contrast to Mo’ Wax, who at this time had developed a reputation for attractive artwork, with artists such as Futura, Swifty, 3D, and Toshio Nakanishi all creating covers in the first few years.
When James Lavelle wanted to start releasing techno, it made sense for him to turn to the Ifach team. Mark Broom had been hanging out at the Mo’ Wax offices, and as he later recalled it was the label’s designer Will Bankhead who pushed Lavelle to pursue techno.
In July 1995 Excursions, the new Mo’ Wax sublabel, released two 12" singles by The Prunes and iO. There would be ten releases all together, five techno and five hip hop, and these included Mark Broom and Dave Hill’s Midnight Funk Association, Stasis, and Twig Bud.
Twig Bud was a new alias for Peter Ford, and the only time he has used it since. His EP Harry’s Law (sometimes credited as Twig Bud Presents) reached #131 in the UK’s Singles Chart in March 1996, outside of the Official Top 100. The EP featured three tracks, and a fourth was included on Mo’ Wax’s Headz 2B compilation album, which reached #34 in the UK Compilations Chart Top 50 in November.
Harry’s Law was the final release on Excursions before James Lavelle shut it down to focus more time on Mo’ Wax. Songs from the ten 12"s were collected onto a compilation CD album in December 1996, which also contained a mix by Mark Broom.
Baby Ford’s fourth album Headphoneasy Rider was released by Black Market International in 1997, after years of jumping between various aliases. He explained at the time why he felt it was time to bring back Baby Ford:
“I’ve used the Baby Ford name again because it was a way of being more direct. The name taps into peoples awareness. I’m just not trying to be too cagey, y’know. There’s nothing to hide.”
2001 saw the release of Sacred Machine, an album credited to Baby Ford & The Ifach Collective featuring Ford with Cheru Amadi, Ian Loveday aka Eon, Mark Broom, Peter Adshead aka Stasis, and Thomas Melchior. The album was released by German label Klang Elektronik alongside a 12" single and EP.
A fifth Baby Ford album Basking In The Brakelights was released in 2003, and is his most recent album across all of his aliases.
The most recent Baby Ford 12" was Mystery Falls released in 2014 on Trelik, another label Ford started in 1992 with Ian Loveday. Both Ford and Loveday began working together on Fetish from Ford’s third album. Their Minimal Man collaborations were released on Trelik and other labels, but following Loveday’s death in 2009 Ford has continued running Trelik solo.
Since 2014, Ford has released a Fabric mix, another Perbec collaboration with Mark Broom, remixed Och and DJ Wild, and has been DJing across Europe.
