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He was a music maven and millionaire at 21. What could go wrong? Quite possibly everything.
At 14, British vintage-vinyl fan James Lavelle played his first DJ set. At 18 he launched the pioneering trip-hop label Mo'Wax. By 21 he was a millionaire tastemaker. His 1998 all-star UNKLE album with DJ Shadow helped define a genre. But it's only when you're going this fast that the wheels fall off.
From signature shoes and TV slots to drugs and burnt bridges, Lavelle's career in the 2000s mirrored the bursting bubble of music biz excess. But we haven't heard the last from him yet.
Director Matthew Jones zippily distils Lavelle's hyperreality – warts and all – onto the screen, digging through more than 700 hours of footage drawn from personal archives and revealing interviews with collaborators and co-conspirators including the Stone Roses' Ian Brown, Grandmaster Flash, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Badly Drawn Boy and many more. The vibrant result is a captivating, no-holds-barred insight into an extraordinary man and an equally extraordinary era.
"A clear-eyed portrait of a time and a place in music that could never be repeated, and a guy who had the knack to play it all to his advantage, at least for a little while." – The Verge
Anthony Carew will host a Q&A with Matthew Jones at the session on 5 August.
Lisa Palermo will host a Q&A with Matthew Jones at the session on 7 August.
