Chris Lake kicks back in a sprawling floor of a towering Los Angeles office building used mostly for storage, selecting one of the dozens of office chairs crowding the industrial space with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city’s west side. He kicks his feet up on a packing box and declares himself comfortable.
It’s a rare moment of repose in the run-up to Lake’s album Chemistry, released independently Friday (July 11) through his own longstanding label Black Book Recordings. (While Black Book was previously signed to Astralwerks, that deal expired in early 2024, returning the label to an independent status.)
While it feels incorrect that the album is his first, given that the British producer’s releases go back to 2002, Chemistry is in fact his first solo long player, and it’s an excellent, often exquisite project — one that friends with the musical taste you respect most have texted about in the last few weeks, just to say how good they think it is.
But why is Lake doing it now, or at all?
“I got to a point where I felt like I should challenge myself in a different way,” he says. “Friends had talked to me about making an album, but I’d never felt like I had a style or sound in mind that would be right for 12 or 15 tracks.”
Gradually, however, a vision formed for the Los Angeles-based house producer, whose slinky, cool, often kind of deliciously strange productions have been a through-line of the scene since Lake came to wider prominence in the early 2010s. He had time in his schedule to focus and wanted to test himself by working with a wider collection of collaborators.
To wit, fellow artists like Kelly Lee Owens, Amber Mark and Nathan Nicholson came over to his house to work on music, with Lake and his guest du jour typically spending a few hours talking and drinking coffee before even attempting to make anything. He was nervous that Bonobo might not even like him, but when the guys got in the studio together they not only clicked, but made the album’s closer, “Falling,” which features vocalist Alexis Roberts.
“I don’t fawn for DJ culture… It’s just never been my thing,” says Lake, who is thoughtful, considered and funny, joking around and playing rock paper scissors with the trio of teammates he has in tow today. (He wins every round.) “I’m obsessed with music production and the power of the single and how one song can just make such a difference to people’s lives. There are people who’ve made songs that have had that effect on me, and they’re normally the people I get the most nervous or excited about. Bonobo was definitely one of them. I love his music. I adore it, so working work with him is really fun.”
With the album now out, there’s cause for celebration. Lake will play back-to-back shows at New York’s Brooklyn Storehouse tonight and tomorrow before he jets off across the summer and fall festival circuit, playing events including Shambhala, Deep Tropics, North Coast, Portola, EDC Orlando and a flurry of standalone club shows, including one at Red Rocks alongside Chris Lorenzo, Lake’s partner in their lauded Anti Up project.
Here, Lake talks about Chemistry, what his frequent collaborator Fisher is really like and how the low points of his career lead to these high ones.
You mentioned having a vision for the album? What was it?
I find it difficult to verbalize, but the best way to describe it is like, one of the things that’s really been brought by the popularity of dance music over the last few years, or the effectiveness of dance music, has been the almost radical simplification of beats and ideas.
It’s great, and it’s powerful. But I personally wanted a course correction. I’m a naturally musical person, and I had a vision of of how I could make things more musical, but still feel substantial and effective in a club. That’s what I wanted to do.
How did you do it?
There are things I wrote earlier on in the two year process where I was like, “Okay, I feel like I’ve got the beats to make this all click now.” The album is pretty much the vision I initially had of what I was setting out to create. It honestly was a really personal thing. It was this personal journey that I’m letting other people hear.
What I’m kind of saying is, I’m not making things to be popular. I’m making them because this is how I want it to sound. When I talk to a lot of musicians, I’m actually surprised by how many of them don’t talk that way. I feel like a lot of people want to be loved and do what needs to be done to be popular and successful.
Do you feel like you were ever that guy, that artist?
No, not really. From the outside, I probably make some really odd decisions. I love working with smaller artists and unknown artists. I’ve done it all my career. A popular thing to do is work with a really big singer; it helps to market your song. I’ve never done it.
With not doing things that would potentially make the popularity of your work exponential, how have you sustained and maintained your position in the scene?
I don’t know. That’s the bit I’m really thankful for, because I definitely think I probably could have taken an easier path. Maybe it’s those decisions that do help me keep my identity.
Over the years you’ve only grown in popularity and respect. Were there times where you felt that slipping away, given that you weren’t making any of the types of decisions you just mentioned?
No, not in the last 10 years. One of the things I’ve talked about quite a lot is that there was a period before that where I got a bit lost, disillusioned. I got disconnected. I started listening to other people’s thoughts about what I should do, and I made some really bad decisions both musically and in my career. I made decisions based on money that I look back on and would never do again.
What era of your career was this in?
It was 10 or 12 years ago, in the EDM boom. I made music that felt odd compared to the rest of the stuff I’d done up to that point. Luckily it was a short period of time. At the time, I felt like it was one of the worst things that happened to me, but I look back on it and it was one of the best. I actually say with pride how much I felt I f–ked up, because it brought this reaction out of me that was one of the best course corrections that could have happened.
How did you course correct?
I had a choice to either abandon my Chris Lake project and start fresh, or work extra hard and make better music that would make people forget some of the things that happened before.
That was the decision I made, and it was an absolute f–king nightmare, but it ended up working. It’s the thing I’m proudest of in my career to date, that I actually stuck to it, dug deep and connected to making my own musical decisions again and made decisions because they were right, not based on money. Money is secondary in everything I do, and it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, because it’s very easy to make really s–tty decisions based on the Benjamins.
I’m not trying to embarrass you or anybody, but can you give me one thing that happened in your career where you were like, “I hated that.”
It was a culmination of everything. There’s things you can do that feel natural and right, and then things you can do where something feels a bit off. I made a lot of decisions that felt cumulatively off, both musically and in shows.
I remember doing a residency at XS [in Las Vegas] and I’m like, “I’m doing these shows for the wrong reason.” I f–king hated them. What would happen was, there’d always be an artist handler looking after you in the Vegas shows. You’re taken to the club, you play, and then they take you to the elevators and you get on and you’d be left alone. I’d finish these shows, I’d get in the elevator, the doors would close, and I just feel like [makes deflating motion]. I’d just be so sunken and defeated, so I knew there had to be a course correction.
You’re releasing Chemistry independently. Does being an independent artist help you untether yourself from all that?
Massively. These are all my team’s decisions. Everything’s put together by us. It’s kind of like, live or die by the decisions we make, and that feels great. It’s a lot of work, but I’ve got some great people around me.
You and Fisher playing that massive Coachella show in 2023, then shutting down Hollywood Boulevard together for a show together, or when you were on the 2017 HOWSLA house compilation by Skrillex and OWSLA or when you played the first ever campground set at Coachella this year — you’ve always been an artist that kind of busts out with these big moments, and it feels like Chemistry is another one of those.
I like the moments. They’re impactful, and the ones you mentioned feel like they’ve been impactful. HOWSLA as well — I look back on it and realize, “Holy s–t, that really felt like quite an influential thing.”
How so?
Skrillex was essentially co-signing a genre. I noticed at the time that conversations were shifting. It was almost like he brought an awareness to [the house] genre that I don’t think a lot of people necessarily understood was happening at the time. We did that album together, and it made a big splash. I feel like it opened up the genre. I remember the conversations with Spotify, Apple, YouTube and companies like that just shifted. Things got easier. I’m really proud of that.
Here’s a silly question.
Okay, I’ll give you a stupid answer.
Great. What is Fisher like? He never does interviews.
He’s a lunatic.
Is he really, though?
Yeah. No, listen. There’s two sides to Fish. He couldn’t give a f–k about doing interviews, and I love that about him. He’s a fantastic human. For anyone that knows him, it’s no surprise that he’s so successful. He walks into the room, and you absolutely know he’s walked into the room. There’s no subtlety to it. He improves the mood in the room. He lifts people. Everyone loves being around him. He’s unbelievably fun.
And on a personal level, I’m very, very lucky. I’ve got unbelievable friends, and he’s one of my best friends. He’s a great mate. He’s crazy talented, but the effect that he has on a small room personally is completely mirrored through how he controls a massive room of 40,000 people. It’s exactly the same. The person you see up on stage, that’s him.
What do you think he’d say about you?
“He’s a boring c–t.” [Laughs.] We’re nothing alike. We’re so different, but we get on like a house on fire.
What’s your take on the scene at large right now? What I’m hearing from people is that a lot of the music is kind of, I don’t want to say reductive, but a lot of it sounds the same. What’s your take on that?
I try not to be overly highly opinionated publicly. I don’t want to be negative, but I get to listen to a lot of the music that’s released. I said it earlier, there’s some really great beat makers out there, but there’s not many people making anything new and original. Technology and AI have brought something called stem splitting, so you can now take a full mixed song, pipe it into a bit of software, and it’ll strip the vocal from the song, and the guitar, so you can separate things. It’s surprisingly good quality.
But now there’s this whole world and catalog of songs that anyone can sample. For the most part, people are taking a simple beat, putting an unbelievably previously successful vocal over the top, and that’s now a song or an original composition. It’s rewarding, but it’s kind of like McDonald’s, where it’s rewarding at the time, but it’ll leave you feeling like s–t if you have too much. That’s kind of what’s happening in the scene, and it doesn’t leave you feeling healthy. [We need] more f–king nourishing meals. I think there needs to be more people trying to write new, original stuff to feed the scene.
Who are the people making original music and pushing things forward?
That’s a good question. There’s a bunch of them. Skrillex is one. Fred again.., Rüfüs, Chemical Brothers. They’ve been around for f–king donkeys years, but they’re so f–king fresh and successful. Sault. F–k Sault’s amazing, holy s–t. They’re just the first ones that come to mind.
You’re obviously contributing to it too, with the album.
I hope so. We’ll see if people listen to it.
Do you feel like you’ve entered that kind of — I’m going to use this term because it’s the one that’s coming to mind, but I don’t mean old — elder statesman sector of the scene?
Yeah. It’s just a reality. I’ve noticed, especially since the pandemic, this shift in how people talk about me or to me. It’s fine. It’s just the reality of life. I’ve been around for a long time, and there’s a new generation coming in, and f–k, it’s nice that they even listen to me.
