Free Time:James Lavelle

For the past 30 years, James Lavelle has been at the forefront of global club culture. Known as much for his highly eclectic DJ sets as for his production work as UNKLE, Lavelle has been lauded as a highly influential tastemaker and musical curator.

He began DJing in Oxford aged only 15, where he started his first night, Mo’Wax Please. Relocating to London to start the record label of the same name, Lavelle took up a residency at The Fridge for Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud. The pair went on to start their own night together, That’s How It Is, a legendary Monday night session at Bar Rumba on Shaftesbury Avenue that saw Lavelle become a major fixture of London’s burgeoning club scene. This period saw his influence expand as he DJ’d across London and the UK, playing clubs from The Blue Note and Plastic People to Ministry of Sound and Cream. The opening of Fabric in 1999 was a major turning point in his career, and saw him take up a residency and starting the iconic Friday night FABRICLIVE that lasted for five years. Alongside his time at Fabric, Lavelle has also served as resident at a number of the world’s top nightclubs including amongst others, Zouk, Womb, Watergate and Space, where played most recently at it’s closing, for Carl Cox’s birthday. He was one of the first DJs to play China and Eastern Europe, and has played in all six inhabited continents. The development of his UNKLESounds project saw him traversing the globe, headlining festivals and clubs everywhere from Tokyo to Mexico City, with one of the first audiovisual DJ setups. His ability to craft genre-spanning mixes translated from to the club to the studio, where he created contributions to a number of iconic mix series. After releasing mixes for Tribal Gathering and Cream, he produced the inaugural FABRICLIVE CD, and has gone on to release four critically acclaimed mixes for Global Underground, the most recent of which came out in 2015. Pete Tong lauded him as ‘one of the most gifted minds in music’ when introducing his ‘mindblowing’ Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1. He continues to produce albums under his UNKLE moniker, working with a myriad cast of musical collaborators including Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, Brian Eno and Josh Homme. The most recent UNKLE album, The Road: Part II / Lost Highway topped the Billboard Electronic Album chart in 2019. With UNKLE, Lavelle has won the MPG Award for remixer of the year four times in the past seven years, and has reworked tracks for artists as diverse as Beck, London Grammar, Ian Brown and Can. In 2014, Lavelle was asked to curate the iconic Meltdown on London’s South Bank, joining a long list of musical luminaries such as David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Massive Attack, Nick Cave and John Peel, amongst others, something he described as one of his career highlights. 2018 saw the release of The Man From Mo’Wax, a critically acclaimed documentary film about Lavelle career, that saw a major release with the BFI, as well as showings at a number of international film festivals. With plans to take his Living In My Headphones night to new cities, and the return of That’s How It Its for a reunion night at Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here festival, as well as touring festivals and clubs around the world, and the long awaited Director’s Cut of Psyence Fiction, 2020 is set to be another exciting year for Lavelle.

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DJ & Producer since 1994. Audio engineer since 2012. Managing Invisible Inc since 2015 Komodo Kolektif since 2018 Wrong Party since 2021

Gordon Mackinnon aka GK Machine has been promoting and DJing at dance events in Glasgow and further afield for over three decades, with residencies in Voodoo Rooms, Alaska, Glasgow School of Art, Basura Blanca, The Berkeley Suite and Nice n Sleazy. Currently operating Invisible Inc records since 2015, the label specialises in psychedelic oddities catering towards aficionados of something a little more cosmic. Whether the music be ambient, tropical disco, new wave industrial techno or space rock, that psychedelic edge is always there. The label has received support from Andrew Weatherall, Trevor Jackson, Cosmo Vitelli, Joakim, Optimo, John Talabot, Ivan Smagghe, Prins Thomas, Jane Fitz, DJ Garth, Sascha Funke, Thomas Von Party, Hugo Capablanca, Manfredas, Alexis Le-Tan, Pletnev, Roe Deers, Autarkic, In Flagranti, Kirsty P, Mr TC, Stuart Maconie, Tom Ravenscroft and many more. Aside from all that, GK has been DJing in clubs, bars, illegal raves, boat parties and secluded beaches for more than two thirds of his life...each set different from the last. January 2025 marked his 30th anniversary of getting behind the decks. Outside of his current hometown of Glasgow he has played at Freak Out Club (Bologna, Italy), Sameheads (Berlin, Germany), Zebulon (Los Angeles, USA), Underground SF (San Francisco, USA), Convenanza Festival (Carcassonne, France), Club Cosmos (Leeds, UK), Love Inn (Bristol, UK), and many more. Within Scotland he's played alongside Adrian Sherwood, Alexander Robotnik, Kid Congo Powers, Zombies in Miami, Vladimir Ivkovic amongst others as well as hosting his own Invisible Inc and Wrong Party nights. He has had regular radio shows on Subcity Radio, Clyde Built Radio, Radio Buena Vida and has a current bi-monthly residency at Mutant Radio in Tbilisi, Georgia and has had mixes/podcasts/shows requested from all over the world: Krossfingers (Ukraine), Mischio Dischi Disco (Italy), Automat Radio (Italy), Mutant Radio (Georgia), 44,100Hz Social Club (France), Lyl Radio (France), Oddity Radio (France), Bamboo Shows (France), Radio Nova (France), Kiosk Radio (Belgium), Pingipung (Germany), Serenades (Russia), WhyPeopleDance (Lithuania), Electric Shapes (Lithuania) and many more in the UK including Ransom Note, People And Places, Sonic Cathedral, Lucid Dream Tapes, Narr Radio, Death By Repetition, Noods Radio, 1 Brighton FM, a quiet RIOT, Racket Racket, Rapture Network amongst others. A diverse producer, GK Machine has released 12”s, EPs, albums and tracks for labels such as Hoga Nord, Sonic Cathedral, Tepeme Musica, Bamboo Shows, Huntleys & Palmers, Paradise Palms and of course his own Invisible Inc Recordings under numerous aliases including The Poncho Brothers, Immaculate Rivombo, Delta Girls, Strange Culture, Legion Of Light, The Mamba and Gamma Knife plus collaboratively as the ethno-space-dub-gamelan project Komodo Kolektif. His own productions have been charted by and received radio/club play from Sascha Funke, Ivan Smagghe, Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Van De Maat (Knekelhuis), Gilles Peterson, Tim Love Lee, JD Twitch (Optimo), Trevor Jackson, Dreems, Auntie Flo, Andrew Weatherall, Carla Del Forno, Why People Dance, Vladimir Ivkovic, Bal5000, Tom Ravenscroft and more. His recent remix for Higamos Hogamos was featured on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone on BBC6 Music.

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