Chris Lake on deadmau5, Black Book Records, and Coachella

Transcript

Chris: I never thought that house music would be effective at crowds that size.

Bobby: Is it 20,000 people each day?

Chris: Yep. I definitely never thought my career would get to doing things like this.

Bobby: There wouldn't be a deadmau5 without Chris Lake.

Chris: It sounds great, doesn't it? It makes me sound amazing.

Bobby: How long after that did you end up becoming Chris Lake?

Chris: I was born Chris Lake. I thought you did your research, mate.

Bobby: You worked at a fish factory with your father. What would you say was one of the worst days on the job?

Chris: You honestly want to know? This is disgusting.

Bobby: Chris Lake, what's good?

Chris: I'm good.

Bobby: Nice, man. Welcome to Miami, by the way.

Chris: Thank you, this is beautiful.

Bobby: Yeah, it's good stuff. I just saw you here a month ago, we're talking about that at the festival, we belong here, that's a fun set, bro.

Chris: Thank you. Yeah, it's nice to come back to Miami. I really enjoyed that festival, I like what they put on, I like the spot, and it's a great vibe.

Back to Back with Kaskade

Bobby: I know you played a show yesterday, you went back to back with Kaskade, you've never done that before, right?

Chris: I have not, I actually never met him before.

Bobby: What do you think, what do I know, awful guy, terrible.

Chris: No, he was great, I really like what he's doing. It was kind of a suggestion that came out of, I wasn't expecting to get asked to do that, and we had to do it unannounced. It was a little unconventional, the way we let people know we were doing it, but the only thing that indicated we were playing together was a plane that went up and said we were going back to back at 9pm, but didn't say where. I was very confused, I got some very angry messages, I'll tell you that much, on my socials.

Bobby: Really?

Chris: Yeah, people were pissed.

Bobby: They were pissed, especially from the guy.

Chris: I've actually never had so many messages from girls, girls like Kaskade, I'll tell you that much.

Bobby: I definitely felt like I was the promoter. That's a good guy to go with, I guess, back to back.

Chris: Musically he's great, and I really enjoyed it, it was really fun, I'd love to do it again.

Bobby: So did you guys plan out the set ahead of time, or was it just go up there and riff?

Chris: I called him a couple months ago, when it was first suggested, had a chat with him, it was like, "Let's figure out how this is going to go, because he plays pretty fast, and I don't know how I'd be able to keep up with that." But he was like, "No, I can come more down to your sort of tempos." To be fair, we kind of met in the middle, we were playing pretty fast, and it was fun, I got to play a bunch of stuff I wouldn't normally play, and it was really enjoyable.

Bobby: Nice, that's what's up. I consider him really, the last year and a half, he's been really growing and exploding. Who are some other artists right now that are really killing it, that you like sonically, what they're doing?

Chris: MPH, Mark Sherry, they're the two that come to mind straight away.

Bobby: Wow, yeah, those are great, I'm a big fan of MPH actually, love what he's got going on.

The Fish Factory

Bobby: So we've talked about this before, at the Sirius studio last year, you worked at a fish factory with your father, right, and we've already kind of gone through that, but I just want to know, not being an artist and having to work that job, what would you say was one of the worst days on the job?

Chris: You honestly want to know? This is disgusting. At one point I was doing the industrial cleaning of fish processing machinery. I'd go in and do the night shift, around 7 through till maybe 2 in the morning, and I'd be steam cleaning the machinery that was opening up and gutting the fish. Basically the machines are just full of fish guts, and you're using a power hose to clean all of it, and things go all places, fish guts going into my face and everything. It's quite disgusting, but the way these machines were designed, you do general cleans every day, but periodically, every couple of weeks, you do a deep clean. The problem with these machines was there were crevices where sometimes fish could get into parts that were really difficult to clean. There was this part where a fish had gotten up into a little ledge in the machine that was really difficult to clean, and it had sat there for weeks and weeks. It had deteriorated into nastiness, it was completely rotten. Something rotten will smell a little, but if you break the flesh, it's putrid, absolutely putrid. I can sense it right now. I sprayed this thing with the steam cleaner and it exploded into my face, and this factory, the smell just consumed the whole place. I had to walk out of it for an hour, it was like a stink bomb, absolutely disgusting.

Bobby: Why did you ask me this question?

Chris: I thought we'd be grateful about the career positioning now compared to working in a fish factory.

Bobby: Do you know, sometimes when I have to now, fast forward, I'm 43, and I have to wake up at 2 in the morning, it's honestly just as difficult to deal with waking up when you're this old, trying to wake up in the middle of the night. So they're both difficult.

Chris: Well, I'm happy you're doing what you're doing now, man, because that's just a different lifestyle, for sure.

Faxing Berlin and deadmau5

Bobby: So I believe it was in 2009, deadmau5 came out and said there wouldn't be a deadmau5 without Chris Lake, because his track "Faxing Berlin," he was a week away from potentially quitting DJing, and you went over to help him work on the track, went to his studio. And you were the one who pushed his track "Faxing Berlin" to Pete Tong, that ended up getting it radio play, right?

Chris: It sounds great, doesn't it? It makes me sound amazing. No, look, yeah, there's a pretty funny story about this actually, I'll tell you the whole thing. I heard of Joel because I was sent a track on vinyl by a group called BSOD, called "A Bit Sketchy." This came through on vinyl, and I put it on the decks, played it, and I was like, this thing is unbelievable, this sounded so much better than anything else I was listening to at the time. I loved it, and I reached out to the distributor that sent me the record, and I was like, "Who is this?" And it was these two guys, deadmau5 and Steve Duda, that was their group. Steve Duda, for anyone watching this, he's pretty famous in the music production industry because he's the guy who created Serum, probably the most popular synthesizer plugin on the market. So I heard this record by both of them, and I reached out to Joel and Steve, started talking to them, and they started sending me a bunch of music. They were in the studio while I was on tour in Australia, and they'd send me tracks on AOL Messenger, I'd download them, I'd be in Australia, they'd finish them, I'd play the song, film it, send them a video, and by the time they woke up they thought this was the best thing ever. This was kind of the really early days of this sort of thing happening. So we started speaking a bunch about music and everything, I was loving what they were doing.

But the real thing that made Joel stand out, and this is going to sound so lame to people now, these were the days where the biggest social media platform was MySpace. You couldn't really customize it very well, everyone's profile looked pretty similar, the only thing that would give you any kind of uniqueness was your profile song, and your friends, your top eight friends. The reason Joel stood out was he was actually a graphic designer and programmer, and he figured out how to program his own custom skin for MySpace. So I went onto his MySpace and I was like, this thing's amazing, I want that, and that was one of the big reasons I was speaking to him, I was like, "Your music's great, but I want a custom MySpace page." I never got one, unfortunately. Anyway, we continued talking, and then I ended up flying out to Toronto to work with him. There were two reasons I wanted to work with him, one, I was fascinated by what he was doing, and two, I was actually struggling with what I was doing at the time, so I was looking to get him to help me with the ideas I was working on. There's a whole load of music from that, we did two weeks of work, and there's loads of stuff that's unreleased, I've still got it all on a drive.

Bobby: No way, you played it out?

Chris: Nah, it's not going to work now, but that's when we wrote "Bro, I Said," I did the edit effects in Berlin. And then I spoke to my manager at the time, Dean, who's still Joel's manager, and I was like, "This guy's unbelievable, you've got to look at working with this guy." I said the same thing to Joel, and they've been working together now for approaching twenty years, it's crazy.

Bobby: That's really the connection.

Chris: It's kind of like, I didn't do anything massively crazy, it's just sometimes connecting good people with good people that can make the right things happen. And he's unbelievably talented, he completely changed the game, and for a period there he really made a lot of people look really basic, they were very behind, both in music and mixdowns, and show production as well. He really moved show production forward in our scene.

Bobby: When did he start doing the cube? Was that

Chris: There were different versions of the cube, the last one was maybe eight years ago.

Bobby: Okay, yeah, he did the deadmau5 helmet too, right?

Chris: Yeah, the original version's pretty funny compared to how advanced it is now.

Bobby: Wow, that's crazy, man, shout out to MySpace and shout out to Joel.

Chris: Yeah, I'm definitely proud to have been involved in those early moments.

Bobby: No, absolutely, nice to look back.

Chris: That's what's up, man, that's a really cool story.

Aliases and a Nationality Debate

Bobby: Who is, if I'm saying this wrong you can tell me, who is Kristof Debuc?

Chris: Oh, that's just some dumbass name I came up with to release music, don't read into it too much. I was like, how can I make it sound foreign? I was really cultured back then. There's two parts to this, at the time I was involved in a record label called Cuba Recordings, so I was like, okay, Kristof, we'll make me sound French, we'll knock the R off Christopher, my real name, and reverse Cuba, and put a fancy sounding foreign D and an apostrophe on there.

Bobby: That's where the name came from? You want honesty, right?

Chris: Yeah, I do. That's what happened.

Bobby: Well, holy cow, that's crazy.

Chris: Was that the original artist alias you had?

Bobby: That's one of them.

Chris: One of them, so you've had a few.

Bobby: I've had a few. I did that as a bootleg name, I released a vinyl with a bootleg remix of the Prodigy's "Climbatize" and Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams."

Chris: No one's ever remixed that one.

Bobby: That is crazy. How long after that did you end up becoming Chris Lake?

Chris: I was born Chris Lake.

Bobby: Well, like, what was your hardest project.

Chris: I thought you did your research, mate.

Bobby: All right, well, here's another one. I want to clear this up, because we make posts about you on DJ Lovers Club, and people claim in the comments that you're Scottish, so are you English or Scottish?

Chris: I'm English. But I lived in Scotland, I moved there when I was fourteen or fifteen, lived there for ten years, my family still lives there, I have a strong connection to Scotland, but I'm English, I'm British. I'm from the United Kingdom, which is four countries, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, I'm part of those four countries, but I was born in England, so it's a little complicated, I can understand why people say I'm Scottish. The real reason people say I'm Scottish is because of Pete Tong. In 2005 I made a track called "Changes," and Pete Tong made that song on Radio 1 his Essential New Tune, then in 2006 Universal signed it. Back in the day, when an instrumental song was becoming popular, a major label would come along, sign it, and pressure the artist into putting a vocal on it to make it more popular. That's exactly what happened with my first big record, we got a vocal put on it, and that song then got Essential New Tune again, so I got two Essential New Tunes for the same song, kind of unique. Then Pete was recording one of the shows for Radio 1 in Scotland, there's a BBC in Scotland as well, it's like an outreach studio, and I don't know how it came about, but I was invited onto that show to come in and do a live interview. I think Pete just assumed, because I'd done the interview in Scotland, that I was Scottish. On that show he said Chris Lake is the best thing to come out of Scotland since Mylo, this is before Calvin Harris, just before Calvin Harris came along, otherwise that sentence wouldn't have existed.

Bobby: Do you know Mylo, "Drop the Pressure"?

Chris: Yeah, that was the biggest song up to that point that had come from Scotland, and that's why Pete said that sentence. But this is the thing, I was just looking to get my start in dance music, and Pete Tong was the authority on dance music, if Pete said Chris Lake's awesome, eighty percent of dance music would go, okay, that's awesome. So if Pete said something you'd follow, and he said I was Scottish, so I was like, I'm running with this, I'm not correcting Pete, and that was it, I never really corrected him. Years later I tried to correct him, and Wikipedia was along by that point, and you try to tell Wikipedia that Pete Tong is wrong, they wouldn't have it. So I spent the next ten years trying to get Wikipedia to correct it, now I believe currently they believe me.

Bobby: We're looking at the squad, everyone's on their phones right now, let's have a look. Says you're English.

Chris: I'm English, thank you, there you go, if you put it on Wikipedia it's right.

Bobby: Nice, you did it, man.

Chris: Yeah, but like I said, it's not a problem, I've got no problem with people saying I'm Scottish, no problem at all, I love Scotland, I absolutely love it, it's just not true.

Bobby: Yeah, we just had to clear that up, because we have people, we say you're English on our page and they'll go to war saying you're Scottish and try to call us liars.

Chris: Fools.

Bobby: No, I'm glad we got that cleared up, really glad we got that cleared up.

The Debut Album

Bobby: So you released your debut album last year, right, and great album by the way, big fan, we were rinsing it here all the time.

Chris: I can't help but notice you don't have one up on the wall.

Bobby: Carry on, man, this is too much roasting, thirty minutes in.

Chris: I'm just disappointed.

Bobby: So the track "Falling" on that album, is it true it took ten versions of it before you finished it?

Chris: Yeah, that song was rough. I'm evidently not talented enough to get it right on the first try. I had a vision for what it would be, and I tried really hard to nail it the way I thought it was going to be, until I played it to Bonobo, and he kind of unlocked it straight away. We were working on a bunch of stuff, and I played him that song, I was like, I've done nine versions of this, this one's driving me crazy, and he unlocked it, that's how the collaboration came about.

Bobby: That's what's up, great track. It's wild it takes that long sometimes, just to create.

Chris: That's just how it goes, right. Yeah, it's annoying.

Ten Years of Black Book Records

Bobby: So I think we're celebrating ten years of Black Book Records this year, right?

Chris: We are.

Bobby: Congratulations.

Chris: Thank you very much.

Bobby: That's what's up, that's two half decades.

Chris: I love it.

Bobby: So who are some of your favorite artists you've had work on the label with you, on Black Book?

Chris: There's loads of them, and this is going to sound like a bit of a line, but we only sign stuff that we love. Everyone we've signed and we work with, we're fans of, it's a passion project. Having a record label isn't a very good business, if you want to make a record label a good business you're probably treating artists badly, and probably not in it for the best reasons nowadays anyway. So we just love doing fun things, releasing records that inspire us, artists that we think have got something, I don't care how popular they are. It's nice when you release songs from artists that are popular and have a big audience, but it doesn't matter to us if they've never released anything before and it's a brand new name, if we love the record, we'll release it. And then I'm a massive loss in my pocket, so it's fine, I don't mind. But to answer your question, I've managed to actually end up getting artists on the label I've been a fan of for a long time. You just mentioned Bonobo, that was a big one, even having him on my album was massive, because in the last ten, fifteen years that's probably the artist I've listened to the most out of anyone.

Bobby: Wow, really?

Chris: Yeah, I've listened to his albums back to back so many times, so having someone like that on the label is pretty unbelievable. People like Green Velvet, pretty deeply talented and influential artists in the scene for decades. But then having really first records from, we did one of the first My Nu Leng songs, we just did another one, his last single, it's nice to have tracks like that. And releasing songs from friends, Chris Lorenzo being a great one, that's one of my best mates.

Bobby: Yeah, he's great.

Chris: We saw him play on a cruise ship, Groove Cruise, and this couple was getting married as Chris Lorenzo was playing a set right above them, it's a pretty crazy thing to see actually. Did it make it better, playing as they were saying their vows, I'm not kidding, it was the craziest thing.

Bobby: I do.

Chris: He's going to be a part of their lives forever now with that song, so that's something else.

Bobby: I went to your Under Construction set with Fisher, it's a banger set, man, I was there for that.

Chris: Thank you, you guys ripped it. That's one of the things people don't realize about that back to back, he's one of my best mates, and those sets aren't hard to get us to do. We take those bookings very occasionally, and it sounds bad, but it's not about the crowd in front of us, we're literally just having a party around us with all our friends, his family, my family, our friends all together, we're having a great time and we just let everyone else watch it. That's basically what's happening, that's exactly what happened at Coachella too, we're having a party and letting everyone else join in.

Bobby: It felt that way, I don't think I was in a crowd that whole weekend that was like that, it felt like a party in the crowd.

Chris: Yeah, that was our intention, we definitely wanted to go there and mess people up.

What's Ahead

Bobby: You guys are doing another back to back with Head In The Clouds, right?

Chris: That's the first new festival, put on by Goldenvoice, which is pretty crazy, same grounds as Coachella as well.

Bobby: You've done your homework.

Chris: Funny, you knew I was born Chris Lake.

Bobby: Oh man, guys, going to be a lot of editing in this. No, but seriously, that's really cool, I'm really excited about that, the lineup's crazy, absolutely crazy. Calvin Harris, Skrillex, CamelPhat back to back Dom Dolla, you and Fisher.

Chris: Yeah, it's wild.

Bobby: Peggy Gou and Four Tet.

Chris: Yeah, I think so, going to be crazy, dude, I'm really proud to be on that lineup. It feels like I've got a funny feeling that's going to be one of the shows that's going to be talked about for a lot of years.

Bobby: Yeah, hell yeah. You have another show coming up in LA, June 19th and 20th, is it 20,000 people each day?

Chris: Yep.

Bobby: That's crazy, man.

Chris: Yeah, it's mad, it's mad. I never thought my career would get to doing things like this, I actually never thought house music would be effective at crowds that size, but it is, it's working now, it's wild, it's literally insane.

Bobby: Speaking of your sets, what would you say right now are the top five tracks you're rinsing in your set that you most enjoy playing?

Chris: I've got my new single with A-Trak called "Make It Fight," I love playing that one. What was that one, that Miami booty bass track I play, "The Dip," that's so much fun. GTA did a remix of it, it's great, fire. There was something I got, a VIP from Four Tet of something called "Human Voices," that's a banger. What else am I liking, Josey's "Devil No More," such a good track, kind of groovy, almost techno-y, very warehouse-y, I love that one. Fifth track, Marquis Hawkes and Rusko, "Professor X."

Bobby: Let's go, there we go, on Black Book.

Chris: On Black Book, that's been around for two half decades.

Bobby: All right, Chris, well, that about wraps this up for today, man, appreciate you coming on, by the way.

Chris: Thank you, my pleasure, my pleasure, my pleasure.

Bobby: Easy, easy, easy, go crush tonight, man, go crush.

Chris: Peace.