If you own records of House Music and have been carefully selecting your beloved wax from your trusted store in the past ten years, chances are you may be the happy and proud owner of one or several records that came out under the house of the Rawax family of Labels.
Born out of the burning passion for Electronic Music dripping from the soul of Robert Drewek, one of the founders of the roaring Dbh Music Distribution, it is a place in which you will find all of what's made for your head to nod and your feet to tap the beat until the doorman kicks your drunk ass outta the club. Now if your guilty pleasure at 6 am is to listen to La Macarena, you may not be reading the right shit, but if you have been dying to see some legendary records being re-issued, and if your heart is beating for warm beats and an intense presence of true soul melting down the spirit of House and Techno and all of its relatives into one family of labels, you should probably keep reading to remind yourself of the birth and the rise of labels that are not only reviving the past but also designing the future, providing a place where timeless classics meet new heads on a constant basis and with the persistence of a chain saw on a block of wood.
More than just a family of labels, Rawax has developed an image that comes closer to an empire defending the spirit of a genre of music that is meant to live after the sun will have turned us all into evaporated old cunts. So if you will, I would like you to join me on this humble attempt to celebrate their tenth anniversary, and I promise not to waste your time by telling you a little more about the Dynasty of Rawax, Chiwax, Housewax, and Dubwax.
Let's now put things back into context. 2011 (it may be 6 am, but I still know how to count), the night goes on and the warm-up deejay is absolutely killing the crowd pressurizing this Chicago based room like a gentleman, Rawax gets in and grabs himself a drink at the bar adjusting the sleeves of his sophisticated tuxedo. But by the time he throws a twenty to pay for his glass of liquid poison, his eyes freeze like an old broken tape player, petrified by the gaze of a lady called Housewax, majestically standing in her elegant 70s style garment that makes you feel like she's from another planet. Not only did she softly govern the room through her presence but now instantly conquered the heart of our main character who did not even have the time to sip on his well famous Old Fashioned cocktail, and every single drop of blood flowing through his veins is now warming up to reach the other end of the counter to attempt contact with the goddess.
As you can imagine by knowing the rest of the story, lead to one hell of a hot night during which someone may have forgotten to put on the coat before walking in, and even left a few of his relatives before leaving. Fortunately enough, the supremacy of the love that invaded both of these foolish hearts (and maybe other parts of their anatomy) kept them going for long enough that we still can talk about it happily. A few months later, the birth of their sumptuous progeniture came as naturally as your left foot chases the right one, and this is how the story of Chiwax begins, named after the legendary city where the two of them met.
However in love maybe our dear Rawax though, he was sick enough of the classic german weather of an awfully long-lasting winter that year, and desperately booked himself a plane ticket for Jamaica a few weeks before meeting up with the one he was gonna share his life with. Unfortunately enough we're talking about one busy lady, so your man had to fly on his own and cope with the idea of being away from his freshly met instant crush, so hard though, that his first night turned out to look like he was after well-performed general anesthesia with the great help of local homemade moonshine. And the moon sometimes does not bring the best of yourself, which leads to unfortunately being a little bit too comfortable with the waitress. Waking up in the morning, he runs to the airport to fly back home with his mind full of guilt and resentment, elaborating a plan that will help him cover up the biggest mistake of his presence on Earth.
Fast-forward 15 years later, our dear friend Rawax will sadly get to know the saying that whatever you do in Life, you will always have to meet the man with the white jacket that provided all of what you have been enjoying, and will inevitably ask you to pay the bill when you expect it the least. And as Rawax finds himself having to deal with the past, we get introduced to his lost son who came back asking for his due recognition, coming under the name of Dubwax.
Don't ask me how this came to my mind. I'm still looking for a therapist and a new coffee table as I ate the old one last night.
Wanna know the real story? I have no clue about it, and I hate interviews enough to not want to go through this process with anybody I have enough respect for avoiding the incredible amount of stupid questions one can ask during the process.
How to get to know better the label and pierce the secret behind the constant wave of records hitting the store tainting the shelves of white and dark blue? See, that's the kind of question I want to avoid. And the best possible cure to ignorance and foolishness of mind is to sit back, listen, and mostly shut up. Now if you're attempting to go through the entire catalog, you may get a chance to put your hand on the Ariadne thread that will guide you through time, tracing the sonic epistolary journey of the Rawax family of Labels.
A sound that is emphatically raw, taking roots in the deepest origins of Electronic Music, letting House Music flirt from near or far with Techno like we can witness in Simoncino's Deep EP, sharing the common legendary drum sound with many relative pieces while still, always and forever exploring worlds of different interpretations of this form of expression as much as possible. A sound, that as said before, gives back the sense of eternity as well as access to dearly missed (or used and abused) pieces of the House Music puzzle to the new generation but mostly welcomes current talented artists that have established themselves through their unique vision of Music.
Rawax as a source, made space for a more Chicago oriented type of sound through the creation of Chiwax, but also lead to the idea of a space needed for a deeper and housier sound guided by the same energy (Housewax), to then inevitably open up the door for a Dub oriented statement representing the legendary far under explored genre of DubTechno with anothr structure named Dubwax.
As all the greatest projects we have been witnessing through history, this all came out of a general disagreement with what was happening in a genre that once was granted its letters of nobility and in a quest to shine the light on the spirit that helped Electronic Music climb to the level of unavoidability where it sits today, along with a group of likeminded souls to form a team that is meant to stand the test of time.