Christopher Lawrence is an incredibly nice man. It’s tempting, in a scene where the media’s portrayal of the personality of a given DJ is all you’ve got to go on (apart from their taste in music, of course), to throw some kind of quirky persona on each scene’s stars. It wouldn’t work with Chris. The blond-haired LA native laughs easily, sounds incredibly relaxed at all times, and generally comes across as a completely unaffected man who’s blissfully happy with his chosen career.
With good reason. His vacation with wife Sara and son Damian is going just fine even with the late addition of a few unplanned shows along the eastern seaboard. One of LA’s most consistent producers, Dave (Needle Damage) Audé has been working with him on his latest single and his impeccably constructed, pressurised trance sets are well received on the edges of all seven oceans.
Have you changed your sound to reflect changes in the scene?
My sound’s constantly developing and changing. You always hear new music, new variations. That’s what keeps it fresh and exciting. But for the main part I always been able to play the underground trance and tough progressive bit that I’ve always liked. Why, what changes have you seen?
Particularly that Australia seems to be more influenced by passing trends in dance music.
Electronic music is regional in the United States and it develops its own style depending on the region. You have trance in other areas but on the West Coast trance is the most recognisable sound because it developed there and then travelled across the country. But down in Florida breaks are popular but breaks aren’t as popular in the northeast and northwest and then it just disappears. In Australia it’s more homogenised because the major population centres are here on the east coast, primarily in a few cities, so whatever it takes hold it can take hold really quickly.
But coming back here this time I was really blown away by how much dance music I’m seeing. Because in the States the DEA and the federal government are shutting down the large electronic music festivals and raves, so it’s really hard to put them on. So everything’s gone into clubs, which means that in the States where I’d always been playing to 10 – 50,000 people every Saturday, it’s clubs. Now with clubs, clubs are small, there’s 400 to 2000 people max in a club so to me it seems like it’s gotten a bit tighter and smaller in the states, but I come here and there’s festivals going on all over the place. I just played Field Day on the Gold Coast and it was fantastic, and I was impressed for one that the number of people that came out for it and second, how supportive the community was out there. In the US communities are anti- electronic music. Here it was so supportive. Every radio station was talking about it and when we drove up to the venue, the police working around it were like, ‘keep going, there’s no traffic, take this road.’ And I’m just going, ‘this is so different,’ they were working in conjunction with the event promoters to make it a good event. The community’s behind it. I was blown away.
As well as the fact I’ve just come back down here to Melbourne, and every radio station I flip through, even when they play rock music, a few songs later you’ll suddenly hear electronic music! I just think it’s incredible the support that electronic music has from radio and television and the media. Three magazines that are weekly down here in Melbourne, the cover stories are about electronic music or DJ’s. God, if we could get that in the states, but in the states they really don’t want to recognise it. The ironic thing is there’s thousands of people in every city going out every night, but it’s like, not acknowledged in the media. It’s amazing that you can sweep something like that under the carpet for 10, 15 years but they’ve managed to do it.
‘Cause they want to tie it to the drugs. Like the Crackhouse laws and the big bust at LA’s Spundae at Circus recently.
They went in there… and that was because… there’s a guy named Gene who owns Circus and Arena (two of LA’s biggest clubs), he actually owns the entire block that they’re on so no one can complain about the noise. He’s had a successful run of clubs there for over 20 years but in the last election Hollywood wanted to secede from the city of LA and become its own independent city. The person that was heading that succession was Gene who owns Circus and Arena. Right after the election when Hollywood failed to become independent, that’s when the mayor and the city council decided to make an example of him. Conspiracy theory, yeah but it fits. Suddenly after over 20 years of running clubs and never having a problem, they raided him with over 150 cops, went in with riot gear and swarmed the place. All they found was two people with drugs on ‘em. The police said ‘oh we’d been running constant surveillance on ‘em we’d been doing all this stuff, we knew it was a drug haven’...they didn’t find anything. It was mainly done to intimidate the owner of the club. But when it came to the news and even CNN covered this story, the premise was that it was a den of drug use, but when it confronted as to how many arrests did you make, they made very few.
On the premise of drugs, that’s what this is about. The DEA has failed to stop cocaine and heroin and now they’re turned on raves. Look, these are middle class kids taking ecstasy, we must stopped this. It’s like the coke and heroin’s still pouring over the border, but they’re attacking kids at parties instead. And you never see fights at parties! Grown men dancing! How threatening is that? Not a lot of trouble happening there!
Ok, on to the music. What have you been up to?
Well, I’ve been pretty busy. I just had a compilation CD come out a month ago, that’s called Exposure Four, that came out on System recordings in the United States, hopefully it’ll get distribution over here soon. I’ve got a single coming out the end of this month called October’s Child and that’s going to be on Moonshine. And my full-length album is finally finished, and it’s supposed to come out in April but it may come back to May or June. That’ll be on System. I’m kinda freelance right now, doing stuff for different labels. I was on contract with Moonshine for three compilation CD’s and I’m at the end of that. Exposure 4 was actually for Hook recordings in the UK as part of their series with X-Cabs and Transa and Chris Cowie. But system put it out in America and Hook’s waiting ‘til a little later in the year. System’s going to be putting out my full length in conjunction with Hook as well.
You’ve been working on that a while!
Yeah, over the past three years, setting aside tracks and now it’s finally done. We’ll see what happens, it’s a variety of stuff, downtempo and breakbeat as well as full-on underground trance. I’m quite happy with it as opposed to compilations I’ve mixed cause a compilation is representative of a night out whereas an album is representative of a person’s passion for music, trying to encompass a lot more.
Tell us more about the single.
I’m working with a new producer named Dave Audé. We’ve been working in the studio and got along really well. My wife did a track (Mile High Club – ‘Night fever’), Dave and I did a remix and we got along really well so now we’ve been working together every week and it’s been fantastic. He’s worked with Keoki, DJ Dan – he did ‘Needle Damage’ which sold 200,000 copies worldwide. I really enjoy working with him. He’s talented and easy to work with, and so all that stuff’s coming out on Moonshine.
So you’re not gonna throw in some of the other stuff off the album?
(LAUGHS) No, it’ll be all peak time! I wouldn’t do that to an audience! I hate that when you hear a guy say ‘yeah, I’m here to educate the crowd,’ but it just translates to you don’t have any good records. Nobody wants a lesson at two o’clock in the morning! Nobody wants a guy with a chalkboard telling ‘em how things should be!
Any tracks doing it for you we should know about?
There’s a track that’s been out about a month now but the remixes are great. It’s BK Revolution on Nukleuz. Nukleuz used to do a lot of hard house and now they’re starting to do more trancy type stuff, which is good cause hard house is off on its own. And then ‘October’s Child’, which I just finished with Dave. And there’s a track from an artist called Katana called ‘Tokyo’. That’s really good.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to coming up to Sydney and playing!
Christopher plays at home, January 23rd.
