Groovin’ To The Max : Marlboro Music
Mo’ Wax Records is best known for helping define trip hop, the early-90s genre of downtempo hip hop. The record label was based in the UK, but made connections internationally, with labels such as Toy’s Factory in Japan, Solesides in the USA, and Marlboro Music in Germany.
This allowed for releases by DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and UNKLE to gain popularity around the world. But wait a second! Marlboro Music? Is that real? It’s got to be fake, right? Although many people believe Marlboro Music and their releases are funny bootlegs, I’m here to tell you they’re real.
Marlboro Music began in Munich, Germany in 1986 after the Marketing Director of Philip Morris Germany Knut Föckler set up a new subsidiary operation called International Design and Entertainment (IDE) as part of a brand diversification program. The idea was to capitalise on the popularity of Marlboro Cigarette’s iconography and brand, and use this to move into new markets. These included Marlboro Travel (Marlboro Reisen), the Marlboro / Philip Morris Design Shop, and Marlboro Music.
It’s important to note this was a German initiative and shouldn’t be confused with the Canadian and American Marlboro Musics which ran Marlboro Music Festivals in North America. But Marlboro Music in Germany did their own concert promotions too, and in 1987 held their first MarlboroMusic Rock Festival.
When it first began, Marlboro Music was rock oriented, with acts like German alt rock group Playhaus and soft rocker Dan Lucas on their roster. Stephan Beringer joined as label manager in 1990 just as Marlbor Music began to embrace a wider range of genres. “The label had some good success already, but with the move to focus on UK dub dance, acid house and hip hop, things really started taking off”, he said.
Starting in 1992, Marlboro Music released a series of compilation albums titled London Underground, compiled by Dave Henley and Justin Langlands. The London-based pair had been making music as The Blood Brothers and Pressure Drop, and while visiting them Stephan would also drop into Honest Jon’s, a record store James Lavelle worked in when he started Mo’ Wax.
“We had a good thing going on with Pressure Drop who had just charted in the Top 50 with their debut album, and between that and me being at Honest Jon’s every week looking for new acts, I must have met James,” Stephan said.
The second volume of the London Underground series was released in 1993, and featured Palm Skin Productions’ Like Brothers and Marden Hill’s Come On which had both originally been released on Mo’ Wax.
Mo’ Wax was started by James Lavelle in 1992 when he was 18 years old, reusing the name he used for a DJ night in Oxford, and a column he wrote in Straight No Chaser. Initially Mo’ Wax released acid jazz 12” singles similar in style to those on Giles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud label. But by 1993 Mo’ Wax was moving beyond that sound as they put out fresh sounding music by artists like DJ Shadow and begun to grow an international audience.
Stephan Beringer signed a deal with James Lavelle and Steve Finan (co-owner of Mo’ Wax at this point) in 1993 for Marlboro Music to begin releasing the Mo’ Wax catalogue in Germany. Tim Stickelbrucks also joined Marlboro Music in 1993 as A&R and he still remembers when the announcement came.
“It was my second day with the label and they had a big announcement like, ‘We signed with Mo’ Wax, we have this great label’. At that time, there was already a hype going around Mo’ Wax and James. It wasn’t commercially big, but everybody talked about it and James was kind of looked at as the new wonder kid. Then, my job was basically bringing Mo Wax to Germany,” Tim said.
The deal was announced at PopComm, an annual music trade show held in Cologne, and to celebrate there was special merchandise produced featuring the Mo’ Wax and Marlboro Music logos. “We produced a lot of swag,” Tim said. “I remember we did this Mo’ Wax DJ bag which became the thing everybody had to have.”
In November 1993 Marlboro Music sponsored a Mo’ Wax Tour in Germany featuring DJ Shadow and James Lavelle, but the first proper Marlboro Music / Mo’ Wax release was Deep Joy’s Take 12” single, released in 1994.
The artwork was created by Headcharge, a graphic design studio run by Hans Hammers Jr. II who had begun partnering with Marlboro Music in 1992 and were the exclusive design and communication agency for the label until it closed.
At the time Mo’ Wax releases had a distinctive look designed by Ian “Swifty” Swift. There was no cover art, and instead the cover was blank apart a strip featuring information about the music, logos and barcode, similar to an obi strip seen on many Japanese albums. The majority of the first 20 releases on Mo’ Wax featured this bare look, until Marlboro Music stepped in and wanted to do something different.
“When we signed up, I think it was one of the first times they had the financial ability to do things they couldn’t have done before, like investing more into their artwork. So we helped with that a lot, and our deal was the first step”, Tim said.
Hans Hammers Jr. II worked on each of the Marlboro Music releases, and designed the logos and slogans which appeared on them, like the “Groovin’ To The Max”. When Mo’ Wax became involved with the label, Hans had his own ideas to help make these new records stand out.
“Marlboro Music was quite marketing orientated,” Hans said. “It was our idea to give the Mo ́ Wax/Marlboro Music releases a distinct visual makeover that would enhance the visibility of the Marlboro Music logo, and give the whole artwork a different spin without destroying its original iconic impact.”
But while Marlboro Music wanted attention-grabbing visual artwork, for James Lavelle the most important part was the music.
“We were very keen on having artwork for every release while James just wanted to get stuff out,” Tim said. “With some artists the artwork was important to him, but for others he would just want to get it out fast. So in the beginning we printed a big sticker to put on the cover and release it. But then we decided we’d rather wait another week or two and have proper artwork made as that was pretty important to us.”
The first Deep Joy single featured a sticker designed by Headcharge over its cover. But from then on each Mo’ Wax release on Marlboro Music featured full colour artwork. Similar to the early Mo’ Wax releases, Marlboro Music adopted an obi strip design down the left-hand side of their covers, with a big Mo’ Wax logo to separate it from the rest of their releases.
With Hans in charge of design, this period saw a shift in Marlboro Music’s visual style, and Stephan Beringer told me they were proud of their artwork and gave it a lot of attention.
“Our fan base was very strong, and I remember many people saying to me that they would buy our releases without even listening into them. That’s how consistent we were,” he said.
Following the Deep Joy single, Marlboro Music had a backlog of Mo’ Wax releases at their disposal. But they wouldn’t release everything Mo’ Wax had put out. Instead, they released Royaltie$ Overdue, a compilation of music from the last two years of Mo’ Wax. It was an announcement telling everyone this is Mo’ Wax, and it’s here now.
From then on, releases would appear in Germany around the same time as they came out in the UK, with Marlboro Music sometimes waiting a week or two so there would be some hype in the press, and the songs would already be appearing on DJ club charts.
From 1994, Mo’ Wax fully embraced the idea of full colour artwork too, and they began featuring a wide range of visual artists, from Massive Attack’s 3D, photographer B+, and graphic designer Ben Drury. With more visually appealing work at their disposal, Marlboro Music began to make fewer design changes to their Mo’ Wax releases, and the obi strip design was left behind.
Stephan Beringer had left Marlboro Music a few months after the Mo’ Wax deal was signed, and Matthias Kürten took over his role as label manager. Matthias spoke to the German music magazine Musik Express in their August 1998 issue, and discussed Marlboro Music’s work withMo’ Wax. “We get along wonderfully with James. If things didn’t work out on a personal level, then we wouldn’t be able to deal with each other on business either,” he said.
What wasn’t mentioned is that Mo’ Wax had switched to Motor Music in 1997 as their German distributor, and instead of special German releases like Marlboro Music had been creating, the Mo’ Wax albums from then on were identical to what was being released in the UK and the rest of Europe. At the same time, Marlboro Music was interested in chasing commercially successful artists, whereas, outside of DJ Shadow, Mo’ Wax was generally more underground.
As their deal ended, the final new Mo’ Wax release on Marlboro Music arrived in 1997, Latyrx’s The Album. While the final release featuring both labels was a compilation CD which accompanied the August 1998 issue of Musik Express. Featuring six Mo’ Wax artists including DJ Shadow and DJ Krush, it marks the end of the two labels working together.
While Matthias Kürten had discussed growth and signing new artists when he spoke with Musik Express in 1998, Marlboro Music would close itself down around 1999 or 2000.
Tim Stickelbrucks had left by 1998, but kept in touch with his colleagues, and he described a year of uncertainty as people at Marlboro Music began to realise they might shut down.
“There’s no exact hard end date. They stopped releasing anything and started a process of returning all the master rights back to the original artists. It would have been unfair to hold the owner’s work hostage once they stopped operating,” Tim said.
By the end of the 90s the world was changing, and the idea of a cigarette company running a record label would have seemed a bit strange to many. For context, in Australia cigarette advertising had been banned outright in 1992 and was already banned for the most part since the 1970s. Duringthe 90s in the USA, Phillip Morris was in the midst of a legal battle with the government over cigarettes and how they were being marketed.
Back in Germany, in 1998 Matthias Kürten had dismissed comments from Musik Express that Marlboro Music was just an advertisement for cigarettes hiding in plain sight. As the magazine noted, Marlboro Music wasn’t just sponsoring events, but was one of the most supportive independent record labels around, with artists actively seeking them out due to their good reputation.
“When we started over ten years ago, we had to explain to people at length what we stand for and what we want,” Matthias said in 1998. “Today it’s more the other way round, we are respected — also by the artists.”
But even with their popularity and respect among artists, the label realised their association with Marlboro’s cigarettes was no longer such a good look, and the label shut down.
Now, many people don’t even believe Marlboro Music was real. On Discogs, a popular website to buy and sell records, all Marlboro Music items are banned for sale. The reason why isn’t clear, but many users mistakenly believe the label is unofficially using the Marlboro branding and that their releases are bootlegs.
When I asked Discogs themselves they said the items were blocked either because they “are not authorized for sale in the Marketplace (for example bootleg, pirate, or counterfeit)” or “the artist or artist’s representative has identified the release as an unauthorized reproduction. Therefore, it is not available for sale.” They cited their Sales and Transaction Policy which says items listed for sale on Discogs must not violate intellectual property rights, such as copyright or trademarks.
It’s worth noting that sale prices for Marlboro Music / Mo’ Wax releases have been inflated elsewhere partially due to Discogs not allowing them for sale. None are particularly rare, and often they can be picked up from German sellers on eBay, because thankfully eBay allows their sale.
But there are still two releases which stand out and will be of interest to collectors. The first is DJ Krush’s Strictly Turntablised, an album released by Mo’ Wax in 1994 and which appears in several German advertisements mentioning a pressing by Marlboro Music on vinyl and CD. No collector I spoke with has seen a Marlboro Music copy, and none is mentioned anywhere online, but Hans Hammers Jr. II assures me it does exist.
The second release worth noting did come out, but still has some mystery attached to it. In 1995 an album by Donut Productions was released by Marlboro Music with the Mo’ Wax logo on it, and while every other Mo’ Wax / Marlboro Music release appears on both labels, for some reason this one only ever came out in Germany.
Nobody I spoke with was quite sure why this happened, but Tim Stickelbrucks remembered releasing it, telling me, “It was a little bit chaotic back in the day. We talked about it with James, and he gave it to us and told us we should put it out. So he was aware we were putting it out.”
It’s just another mystery in the story of Marlboro Music, and while we may never get a clear answer, if you’re curious to learn more about Donut Productions we’ve interviewed one their members Marc Lariviere and you can read that here. •
This article was originally published in The Shadow Knows Issue #2, December 2021. Buy the fanzine here or read more at our website.
