“There’s a great global love and respect for what we do, and that keeps me excited to continue it.” - DAMIAN LAZARUS
from Tokyo, from Tel Aviv, all over. They werelike, ‘Right, we’re here, what do you need us to do?’ That was amazing. Empowering. It was really special. There were moments over the 24 hours that were magical. Hard to put into words.”
Shamans and local Huicholes people got involved too, giving the party their blessing and support. During the last 15 minutes, in the countdown to the end of the calendar, 10 Mayan warriors appeared in full dress and scaled the pyramid behind the decks. “As the final sounds were dissipating, the lead warrior on the pyramid pulled out a conch shell, and blew it. It was almost like bringing it back to 25,000 years ago. It was full of incredible, incredible moments. We had astrologers at the top of the pyramid showing people the universe. It was kind of the next-level of partying,” he laughs. The event didn’t break even, he says. It might have done had he sought outside sponsorship, but that was a no-go. “The key factor was that I didn’t want the event to be plastered with brands. The spirit of the event was so special, that didn’t sit right for me,” he says, though he stresses he doesn’t really want to go into the financial details. But actually, it says much about how Lazarus goes about things. He could have sold himself out many times over through his career, but he’s never done so.
SOUL BOY YOUTH Born and raised in East London, Lazarus was close to his grandfather, who was a fan of Hollywood musicals and vaudeville. He, his brother and his cousins would perform for the family in the living room. Lazarus says it instilled in him a sense of the joy in music that he has kept with him. It was through his cousin, who was into hip-hop and electro, that he was introduced to the art of buying records. Soon he was consumed, spending every spare penny he could scrape together on vinyl. That he was so young didn’t seem to be an obstacle to him. He recalls trying to get into the infamous Wag club in Soho aged 12, but was, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned away. He convinced his parents DJing had a future, and though sceptical, they helped him out with his first pair of 1210s and a Numark mixer which he had set up in the garage. As soon as he got a car, he played parties and youth clubs as a mobile DJ, and got his first ‘residency’ at a club in Gant’s Hill, though he wasn’t technically old enough to be on the premises. He was a soul boy at heart, buying up everything he could by bands like Loose Ends, Soul II Soul and Mantronix, and producers like Nick Martinelli. “When other people would look at the band on the cover, I was reading every sleeve note, working out who was responsible for the music,” he says. “I was just so into it, that I had to be a part of it.”
He was soon launched into the world of underground acid house parties, going to Bagleys and The Cross, leading him away from soul boy funk and hip-hop and into house, techno and hardcore. Because his friends weren’t into this music, he’d find himself in clubs on his own, giving his tapes to anyone who would take them. He blagged his way onto every mailing list he could, from FFRR to Perfecto. Things were starting to pick up when his girlfriend became pregnant. He knew that he could write, and that he needed to fix up and get a proper job, so he decided he’d become a journalist.
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He got a job as a crime reporter on The Sun. “That taught me a lot about life, not all of it good,” he said. “But it was an incredible experience.”
JUNGLE DAZE After two years he’d had enough and his obsession with music led him to merge the two worlds. He started writing reviews and features for music magazines like Touch and Straight No Chaser, and met Jefferson Hack, who commissioned some work from him for the fledgling Dazed & Confused. He soon became assistant editor. Their parties in the reception of their East London office, where Lazarus would invariably end up DJing, began attracting the likes of Kate Moss, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Björk. “I was never a fantastically gifted DJ back then, so I’d be playing everything from Mo’Wax to Talking Loud. House was going through an iffy period, so I began to get heavily into drum & bass and jungle. I’d be at Metalheadz every Sunday and Speed every Thursday and raves in-between. That was the music that was the freshest, most appealing, most futuristic-sounding in electronic music.” He’d be going and ‘losing his mind’ at illegal raves in the countryside too.
The job gave him insight into the way the music business worked and after three years, he left to join FFRR briefly as an A&R man, before joining the newly-launched City Rockers in 2001, taking on the role of head of A&R. And it was there that Lazarus began to make his name in the music business, releasing Felix Da Housecat’s ‘Kittenz And Thee Glitz’ and Tiga and Jori Hulkkonen’s defining electro-
clash single ‘Sunglasses At Night’. The sound was driven by Lazarus seeking to create a British answer to European labels like Kompakt, Perlon and Gigolos. His skills as a DJ began to solidify around this time too, launching the influential but short-lived party 21st Century Body Rockers at Cynthia’s Robot Bar in London Bridge with pioneering guests like Soulwax and Erol Alkan. He was also back and forth to New York, seeing the first live PA from the Scissor Sisters and hanging out with James Murphy’s DFA crew and The Rapture, then to Berlin forging ties with the likes of DJ Hell, Ellen Allien, Kiki and Silversurfer.
STATE OF INDEPENDENCE When City Rockers was set to be absorbed by Ministry Of Sound, he jumped ship. “I felt I knew enough to try and do something on my own,” he said. “I took the same initials and came up with Crosstown Rebels. It was liberating and terrifying. I’ve been through a number of ups and downs in my life, both personally and with my career, times when I’ve hit rock bottom. But I’d always been out there on my own, from the age of 12 and 13 trying to get into clubs, or going out to jungle raves on my own. If I was trying to experience a new sound or a new scene, I always had to have the front and confidence to try and do it on my own. And that extended to having my own label. I’d signed records that had gone into the Top 20, and signed records that had been underground hits,
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