Unkle

[Mistersteve]

I miss the drums of the Shadow colab but there are some really nice moments in the more recent stuff.

Got a lot of time for the key change at 3:26 in this…

Farewell

Thanks @anon19035908. Not doing great, but retail therapy always helps

[keith]

I’m a bit obsessed with Celestial Annihilation from the first album.

The second album isn’t awful but it definitely isn’t a patch on the first. It’s almost as if DJ Shadow was the really talented one.

[mark_h]

Yes! Most of the albums are very solid, think they lost a bit of the hype as never never land (the first post shadow one) took ages to come out and wasn’t the best…
James Lavelle always picks some very good collaborators and the beautiful packaged stuff with some fantastic artwork always helps.
There was a massive ‘installation’ at the saatchi gallery last year that despite my reservations about such things was pretty enjoyable.
Some of my collection:

Beautiful pop up 12:

Signed instrumentals that came out last week!

[Mistersteve]

Amazing. What’s the big white one on the far left?

[mark_h]

UNKLE - Psyence Fiction Survival Kit

One of my first things on the internet was going on the Mo wax message boards (on dial up at my parents) and one day they messaged some of us and they got sent to us for free. Blew my mind as a kid!

[jont2001]

Was a big UNKLE fan back at uni. Think this is my favourite thing that Lavelle has done

Global Underground 023: Barcelona

[mark_h]

Remember playing these, which would never get a proper release due to the massive copyright infringement:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Beats?

Think all discs are on YouTube too

UNKLESounds - Do Androids Dream of Electric Beats? Gi Mix

[kiyonemakibi]

Always found the video for Eye for an Eye really unsettling

[manches]

Always prefer Endtroducing but there’s some great stuff on Psyence, one of my favourites on there is by famous covid denier Ian Brown

[bruised_blood]

It was a shame his vocal version didn’t appear on the album itself.

I love Psyence Fiction. Rabbit In Your Headlights is still astonishing.

[manches]

@bruised_blood

Rabbit In Your Headlights is still astonishing.

Stunning aye

[only_sleeping]

I gave PF a spin the other day - it, along with all the other early DJ Shadow stuff really holds up.

It made me:

1. put Solesides Greatest Bumps on, and queue up Nia, the first Blackalicious album for later in the week too, and…
2. Ask myself “where is the new music that sounds like this now?” I’d like to hear some. (Yes, I know Iove all the old Mo’Wax stuff because I have a huge emotional connection to it, and thee things take time, but still…is there anything new that with a similar sound or feeling? I can’t find much).

[Mistersteve]

I would also like to know the answer to this question.

In the meantime, I reckon this is Shadow’s best beat since the glory days.

DJ Shadow - Rain On Snow feat. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon [HQ Audio]

[mark_h]

In fairness, at the end of mo wax, the stuff they were releasing wasn’t much like the stuff at the start. There was a fair bit of insipid indie and some pretty poor grime as well as a reggae collection!

Ninja tune remains a fairly solid label for a similar sound, and they’ve been around for ages.

[anon9806217]

They made the best mash up ever too:

UNKLE - DMX/Tears For Fears - Who We Be Shout (UNKLE Sounds Edit)

[anon9806217]

Yeah. Pretty much peaked around '96. There are still some belters in the later stuff though - the Urban Tribe album is one of the best things they put out.

[Caedus]

I didn’t know this was a thing either, then saw this and picked it up. Watched it last night and it was very enjoyable.

Was a massive Mo Wax fan after hearing Entroducing when it came out then followed the label for a good while. As @anon19035908 says upthread though, by the time UNKLE followed up PF it completely passed me by. I definitely had a bee in my bonnet about James Lavelle getting lots of credit but appearing to do not a lot. DJ shadow looked like a trapped man by the time PF finally came out. remember seeing Lavelle DJ also and he was shit. Of course he played some absolute bangers but his chops were non existent if i recall.

Literally just remembered i saw ‘UNKLE’ with Idlewild in Warwick with 2 other bands i can’t remember on an NME tour. Think it was James Lavelle and scratch perverts doing UNLKE maybe? THey were good then but that’s because they were playing PF tunes with some incredible turntablism (haven’t written that word for a while )

Anyway, the film - really enjoyed it. The first part of the film properly took me back and today i am going to listen to a lot of that 90’s mo wax run… I’d had no idea about what he’d done since the early 00’s though and found it interesting. Wasn’t expecting it to be quite so depressing mind but enjoyed the culmination with meltdown and did feel a bit emotional when shadow walked back in!

Was really stressful watching them trying to finish that album with Chris Goss (was surprised he was so involved with Lavelle to be honest) and its pretty sad seeing Lavelle trying to recapture the spark of the 90’s.

He’s a funny character though, clearly had some sense and a lot of drive to get to where he was but then it all fell apart. He seemed to make some poor decisions and waste a lot of money (the fact he talks about debt a lot but has that warehouse full of incredibly cool mo wax stuff is funny).

I dunno how i feel about him! It asks in the film if he was taking advantage of all this talent to make his name, or did a lot of the talent take advantage of him to reach a bigger audience? A bit of both. I do think it’s quite telling how he had a number of fallouts (starting with shadow) over songwriting credits. Absolutely on Shadows side following UNKLE. Equally though, its incredible how the UNKLE project was so hyped up over the years and then when it came out everyone turned on him asking what did he actually do! Remember that at the time even and it was bizarre.

Favourite bit was probably shadow crawling through the basement of records with a torch in hand then listening for samples on that little portable turntable.

Going to try and find a copy of the fillm Scratch. ANyone seen that? used to love it and think that will be a ridiculous nostalgia fest!

Long boring post sorry! Thanks @Mistersteve though. Really enjoyed the trip down memory lane!

[Mistersteve]

@Caedus

I dunno how i feel about him!

Yeah, exactly this. Made some very questionable decisions, but also made a massive success of himself from nothing (and then admittedly squandered it).

Found it really interesting watching this whole backstory to a bunch of records I know quite well. Glad they did a decent chunk on Psyence Fiction too, which is clearly the highlight. Shadow comes out of it really well I think, and rightly so.

And yeah, I was really surprised at the Chris Goss input too. Like, he’s literally sat there writing and recording songs, and Lavelle’s just stressing. Genuinely quite ridiculous how little input Lavelle had, especially musically, and then tried to say it was all about ‘the idea’ (plus he got his artsy friend in the doc to say the same thing. I dunno James, I really like the badass drums Shadow sampled…

[Petagno]

@Caedus

Literally just remembered i saw ‘UNKLE’ with Idlewild in Warwick with 2 other bands i can’t remember on an NME tour. Think it was James Lavelle and scratch perverts doing UNLKE maybe? THey were good then but that’s because they were playing PF tunes with some incredible turntablism (haven’t written that word for a while )

I went to the London show of that tour. Was good. Ian Brown came on for the encore to sing Be There and the crowd got so excited that a wave of crowd surfing broke out - comfortably the most sedate song I’ve seen crowd surfing during

[KillingMoon]

yeah, i agree! That video had a real effect on me when i first saw it late night on MTV2 or something. Amazing video. The last time i looked it was on Youtube, but only in a really crap quality version.