so I thought I’d done enough, seen enough to warrant doing it on my own.” Lazarus, aptly, has indeed risen from the dead a number of times. The early days of Crosstown were beset with problems. “We’ve had times where I could have easily closed it down,” he says. “Like two years in, when the vinyl market completely fell apart. There’s certainly been enough occasions when other people might have just closed it down and gone on to do something else. But I’ve believed in what this thing is all about from day one. There’s a great global love and respect for what we do, and that keeps me excited to continue it.”
Kiki and Silversurfer were among those who were the label’s pioneering acts when it launched in 2003, with its edgy European dancefloor sound. The likes of Pier Bucci, Jennifer Cardini and Andre Kraml provided an ongoing soundtrack. Lazarus cites the stunning James Holden mix of Kraml’s ‘Safari’ being the moment when everything fell into place, and held everything together. People started to treat them as a serious contender. “But the third time we had a financial breakdown at the label was a make or break moment for me,” he says. “There’s only so much bad news you can take, running a business like this. So on the last occasion that a distribution company fucked up and went into liquidation, I was left looking at losing a ridiculous amount of money, many thousands of pounds. I looked at what I had around me at that time. And it was Jamie Jones, Art Department, Maceo Plex and Deniz Kurtel. These were artists that no one really knew, but people whose material was
sounding so fresh that I just couldn’t let
it go. My belief in these people kept it running. I felt I finally had a stable of artists that had something to say. To pack it in at that point just wasn’t an option.”
NEW HOUSE SOUND So came the second phase of the label, and a turnaround in fortunes for Lazarus. These would be the acts that would catapult Crosstown into the
big leagues. “It felt like something that was building. We have built an amazing family of people,” he says. “People have gone on to start their own labels, and their own crews, and we’ve been something of an umbrella family for this whole scene. We muck in together. My label manager Leon is also the label manager for Visionquest and Hot Natured. Most of our staff also work for people like No 19. We’ve created a kind of family network of artists, artists I think are some of the most exciting on the planet. Personally, I’m just happy to be associated with them, and happy to have helped out people along the way.”
While Crosstown has helped to forge a new house sound, with the likes of new school types Seth Troxler and Soul Clap, and approached dubstep with Shackleton and alternative sounds with Riz MC, it’s also championed seasoned veterans like Laurent Garnier (“It’s a magical thing, working with your heroes,” he says) and Luke Solomon. There’s been a slew of massive tracks from Glimpse, and key albums from Jamie Jones, Maceo Plex, Butane, Deniz Kurtel and Amirali (along with forthcoming albums from Subb-an, Ali Love and Francesca Lombardo). To try and mention them all is to run the risk of missing something out. Tiga even pitched up again to pen their hundredth release last year.
There’s the offshoot imprints too. The Rebelone imprint disguised its producer’s names with materials like Nylon and Polyester, and though he won’t reveal who they were, he says these productions were by some of the biggest producers in the world working incognito. Meanwhile, thanks to the likes of Aidan Lavelle and Russ Yallop, RebelLion is now starting to make a name for itself too. If anything, all this means his own production has suffered. Though he’s used Crosstown to release a handful of his own tracks, Berlin’s Get Physical released the bulk of it, including his 2009 album ‘Smoke The Monster Out’. But he intends to address that in time. Or, perhaps, when he has time. These days he’s likely busy being tugged from one end of the world to the other spreading the gospel of Crosstown, as evidenced by the Rebel Rave series of psychedelic travelogues directed by David Terranova — recently signed to the label as an artist.
OPTIMISM As we speak, he’s back in LA — he moved there five years ago — on the first brief rest period in the Rebel Rave tour, which is celebrating a decade of Crosstown at the label’s favourite venues around the world. The next leg takes in the US, before blazing through Europe and culminating in Mexico City. “People are starting to realize we have a different way of doing things,” he says. Thanks to the success of the Rebel Raves and the Get Lost parties he throws, he’s been offered his own stage to curate at the massive Beyond Wonderland and Electric Daisy Carnival events across the US, aligning Crosstown with the bewildering explosion of dance music in the US. This could take things to the next stage for them, though it seems slightly at odds with the fiercely independent approach to the label’s development thus far. He insists that he’ll be beholden only to himself. “We’re pretty dislocated from all that, but we’re now being given the opportunity to see if we can make some kind of impact in that world, without having to change our modus operandi,” he says. “I’ve no idea if it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a go. It’s my hope and dream there will be no compromising. I’ve never compromised before, I don’t see why I should now. If it goes well, there could be a whole new world opening up for our music. We’ve thought that maybe we should have a sheep shearing area at the front of the stage, so anyone turning up in fluffy boots will have their feet shorn. That could be a good start.” It seems he’s ever the optimist, and perhaps that’s what infects those around him, and what has helped him grow an independent label in the most challenging landscape the music industry has ever seen. “There’s a strong belief in what we do right now,” he says. “But the great thing is that there’s no real aspirations for us. It’s uncharted territory. But when I look back at my life, I’ve always been a bit of an underdog.” Luckily, every dog has its day.
•The 10 Years Of Crosstown Rebels World Tour lands in London 27th April at Great Suffolk Street Warehouse, with Damian Lazarus, Infinity Ink, Subb- an, Francesca Lombardo, Dinky and more...
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