Mo’Wax founder, DJ and all-round artistic innovator James Lavelle is curating this year’s Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, the month-long festival of music, art, performance and film. Lavelle is also playing a special show with his musical project UNKLE, and doing some DJ sets. On a busy day of press and preparations, he spoke to Theo Hooper about putting on the festival…
Hi James. You’ve lined up a rich variety of talent for this year’s programme. You must be quite proud.
Yeah, I am really proud – of all the people involved, the great acts we’ve got, the diversity. It’s hard to take it all in at the moment because it’s been such an undertaking. We’re at the spinning plates stage right now.
Has it been difficult to get together?
It’s not easy, but that’s because you’re dealing with so many elements you can’t control – agents, schedules, economics. Stuff that’s not really to do with curating, but about the way the industry works. I’ve never done anything on this scale before. Working with an institution like the Southbank is quite different to how I usually do things. But it’s been a really interesting learning experience.
Grandmaster Flash was one of the reasons I got into all of this in the first place
You’ve got some big names on the bill, including Grandmaster Flash (pictured below). Was it difficult getting him on board? No, it wasn’t. He was in town, we met up, and I asked him if he wanted to do it. He didn’t know about Meltdown, but said yes. Which is great, considering he was one of the reasons I got into all of this in the first place.
Is there anyone you’re particularly looking forward to seeing?
I want to see as much of it as possible. I can’t wait to see Josh [Homme] do his acoustic thing, it’s going to be amazing to see something like Under The Skin [the Glasgow-set film noir starring Scarlett Johansson will be accompanied by a live score]. What’s great is that there are a lot of unique shows, like Goldie’s event [the drum’n’bass pioneer is performing the album Timeless with the Heritage Orchestra]. I’m also excited to see some things I haven’t experienced before, some of the young artists, like Glass Animals and Rosie Lowe.