I admit, when celebrated house producer Chris Lake picks up the phone I’m slightly nervous. After all, I’ve bought his records for years and even played out several of them enough times that the vinyl is worn enough to skip. He immediately puts me at ease, apologizing for being a few minutes late and we begin to chat like old friends. He’s utterly charming and modest, almost bemused by some of his successes, and there have been many. Not only does he have scores of singles under his belt, there are two Billboard #1 hits and multiple albums, including brand new “Cross The Line”, done in collaboration with Marco Lys. Below, Chris and I chat about his signature sound, his love of collaboration and creating “Cross The Line”. - “Cross The Line” out now on Nervous Records
“Cross The Line” is not your first album, but is the first you’ve done with Marco Lys. Was the creative process any different than working on singles together?
For me personally the approach wasn’t that different. Marco and I have spent a couple of years now writing together. We love working together – it’s such a great vibe. I think we were looking for something that could sum up that vibe we have together in the studio…that was the idea behind the album.
Comparing the work to your earlier records, your sound has stayed pretty consistent over time. Would you agree?
Yeah. Some might see that as a negative, but I see it as a positive. When I think of key artists I follow, there’s that same sense of identity. I can hear a song and know ‘that’s a Chemical Brothers record’ ‘that’s an Eric Prydz record’ or ‘that’s a Trentemøller record’. These people have their sound, and its evolved but they still have their signature that carries through their records. I like that people can listen to my music and have the same reaction.
You must produce songs that stray from your signature sound, though.
Even with stuff that I’ve done alternatively, there’s still some key element of me in there. I’ve done some very diverse genres, even downtempo stuff, but it still sounds like me. It’s very weird. I’m making all sorts of stuff though. There are days where I’m making quite noisy electro, or something poppy, or deep house. I just love making music, it’s all I care about.
It also seems like you love working with other people. Not only is “Cross The Line” a collaboration, but your discography features lots of work with other artists.
I got to the point a year and a half ago where I had driven myself crazy working by myself. I felt like the vibes were getting kind of negative so I decided to take a more social approach to my music making – working with friends and people I respected. I can pretty much say that since making that decision, even though I’m still doing solo records, I don’t really have days where I’m uninspired, or days where I’m unproductive. There have been a lot of collaborations and I’ve had a lot of fun. Ultimately for me it’s not all about ‘I want to be big, I want to be famous’. I really enjoy making music – I love the scene and I love the people.
In another interview, you mentioned that when it comes to hit songs, production value doesn’t matter as much as conveying a raw emotion. Coming from someone who is very technical in the studio and has worked with people like Deadmau5, is that hard to reconcile?
The quality of production in tracks nowadays is mind-blowingly high, and you work very hard to make sure your track sounds good, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes it just takes some raw idea for it to work. Calvin Harris is a good example of that. His records are massively popular, and he doesn’t mix records the way anybody else does…but they rock, they absolutely rock. It’s a pure vibe – you always understand his music because the emotion comes across properly.
But isn’t it frustrating when you do spend a lot of time and effort on a song and then it gets looked over?
It can be really frustrating. You can never predict how a record’s going to be received. It’s a guess. Most of my popular records I didn’t expect to do well. Most of my biggest failures I thought were going to be my hits. “Sleepwalker” is in the top 10 on Beatport…I did that on my laptop two years ago, as a bit of fun. In all honesty, I thought it would be a free track giveaway. I never thought it would be popular, and it’s blown up. It baffles me. For me, effort-wise and emotion-wise, it’s the song I’ve put the least into. You never know how people are going to respond to your records, what they will connect to. “Changes” is probably my biggest record I ever made and took me four hours. It might the worst mixed record I’ve ever done, but it’s 100% emotion – everyone gets it. If you took it to an audio engineer though, they’d say it’s pretty badly made. I’m still proud of it.
One thing I’ve always really enjoyed about your music is the heavy use of live instrumentation, the hand drums, horns…
It’s all live. I don’t know why, but everyone thinks “La Tromba” is a sample, and it’s not. We made that. I suppose so much of the culture of dance music is that everyone samples everything. Some of us don’t actually do that. Even the violins we recorded using a VST.
And the harmonica on “Humanica”?
Steve Smith from Dirty Vegas recorded that. I got inspired by Lemon Interrupt’s “Big Mouth” and there hasn’t been a harmonica track in maybe twelve years, so we decided we had to do one. We laid down the beats and then I asked a few people if they knew any harmonica players and Steve was suggested. He did it in ten minutes.
Do you play any instruments yourself? Any formal music training in your background?
I play the keyboard but I’m unbelievably terrible. I was promising as a twelve year old playing the keyboard, and it just went downhill. The quantize function came along and it basically meant I never had to play anything in time ever again. That’s pretty much what ruined me. I can play enough to get ideas. I can get chords. I did sing on the album though, on “Running Out”. We were going to get a singer to come in and do this little piece of vocal and they bailed on us. I thought ‘oh I can’t be bothered to wait’ so I went in there and recorded it. At the time I was so embarrassed and I thought anyone who heard that I did vocals would laugh. We just got the remixes in and every one of them just completely overused that vocal!
I’ve heard your DJing style is musically different from your production style. Is that true?
It can be. This past year it’s started to come in line. I’ve tried to make records that reflect me as a DJ. I’m at a point where about 60% of my set is made up of my own records, and that’s a great feeling. I put a lot of effort into these records and then to play them in a club and watch the reaction…I love it.
[...] on URB.com. He was incredibly fun to speak to and very humble – it’s a good read. FIND IT ON URB.COM HERE. Secondly, remember that Booka Shade contest I had where in order to enter, you had to submit a [...]