Published in the April 2009 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 22 - Number 4
By Emily Tan

When the fan votes were tallied this past September, Christopher Lawrence was pronounced America’s Best DJ winner and he was officially feted for the 3rd annual title.

At the ABDJ award ceremony, held at the MGM Grand’s Rouge club in Las Vegas, Lawrence was awarded a gold-plated DJM-800 mixer from sponsor Pioneer Pro DJ and he enjoyed an evening of honor with top vote-getters QBert, Skribble and Scotty Boy. The lights blared, digital cameras clicked as they posed in front of step-and-repeat logos, press reps sought quotes. After more than a decade of playing local L.A. clubs, rocking raves both fabulous and gritty, and building a name as America’s top trance ambassador, Christopher Lawrence had his moment and he was grateful. When it was all over, America’s Best DJ thanked everyone and went home—to Australia.

A lot of things have changed for CL in the past year or so—the ABDJ honor, major back surgery, a relocation to Melbourne—but he hasn’t slowed his pace too much. He will tell you, however, that he’s adapted better to it. The move from his former L.A. home, he admits, has helped.

A DJ since 1993, Lawrence understands all too well the rigors of a global-DJ career. There’s the grueling travel schedule for gigs, the studio time he spends with LA-based producer Dave Audé, and the attention he gives his Pharmacy label. Then there’s the precious time he spends with his family. As he explains in the following, that’s a big reason for his move Down Under—he has a more adaptable and ready support system. Still a tireless champion of big-room trance and psy-trance, its more twisted cousin, Lawrence somehow managed to balance it all, and dancefloors the world over are appreciative.

As he prepared the releases of his latest U.S. compilations—Unfold #2 and Global Trance Grooves, Vol. 1: Two Tribes with John 00 Fleming (Moist Music)—CL re-connected with DJ Times to talk shop, explain his newfound career approach and give a teaser about his upcoming artist album.

DJ Times: Congratulations again on winning 2008’s America’s Best DJ vote! How does it feel?

Christopher Lawrence: It’s an unexpected honor! I didn’t imagine I’d win because there are so many other great DJs.

DJ Times: What are you up to now?

CL: I got back from Argentina last night and I have 24 hours to get my radio show together before I leave for Seoul.

DJ Ties: You moved to Melbourne from L.A. Why?

CL: It’s an amazing city. My wife is Australian and her family is here. My son is six and my daughter turned two on New Year’s Eve. I’m always on tour, and we were living in L.A. without any family or support system, and it was hard on my wife. If we moved to Australia, my wife would have a support system and my son could start school here. It’s a wonderful quality of life in Australia. Australia’s very progressive. They’re not at war with a lot of other nations. They spend a lot of money on health care and children and they put a lot of money back into the community.

DJ Times: Carl Cox relocated his home in the U.K. to Melbourne a few years ago.

CL: You see? For the type of music we’re into, it’s very similar to Europe in that Electronic Dance Music enjoys equal footing with R&B, rock and hip-hop here. Electronic dance music is successful in the U.S., but it’s not as successful as in the U.K. or here in Australia. It’s played on the radio here. The events here for dance music equal those for rock concerts. Even though I don’t play as much over here because I’m always touring, just being in an environment that’s dance-music-friendly helps.

DJ Times: Tell me about your radio show.

CL: My radio show, “Rush Hour,” has been going for a year now. Since I moved to Australia, I’ve been working harder than I ever have before in my life! [Laughs] I was always happy with where things were. It was time to do additional things, like a radio show, and it was also time to do more production. Before, just doing great sets was enough. You could do great parties and produce a couple of great tracks a year. Now, there are a million DJs and producers and guys doing radio shows from their homes and all kinds of things happening. You need to be active on all fronts—have a strong web presence, a strong production presence and bring people to the club. That’s what I want above everything else: I want to DJ. That’s where my heart is. My heart is on the dancefloor.

DJ Times: How do you maintain such enthusiasm?

CL: If you’re passionate about it, I don’t think that passion ever goes away. My peers have looked at their successful careers, like, “Ah, it’s too much work now—I can’t be bothered to go into the studio to do another track,” or, “I can’t be bothered to do this interview or show up at the record shop.” It’s those things that add up. It means something to your fans. If I woke up and someone said there’d be no more flights between the U.S. and Australia, I’d still put together mixes, come up with some kind of virtual reality party over the Internet and throw parties that way.

DJ Times: How’s your health been since your spinal surgery a couple years ago?

CL: It’s 90-percent better. I had more tests done last week. I need to focus a little more on going to see a physical therapist. I’ve been doing exercises when I’m on the road—going to gyms in hotels—but a lot of times I’m lazy and tired when I get to a hotel, and I just wanna eat and rest. I missed four months of work when I had my surgery.

DJ Times: Is your DJ setup still the same as the last time we spoke?

CL: I’ve got two CD players, and I like the [Pioneer] DVJs now. The DVJs are a better machine than the [Pioneer] CDJs. I know that’s terrible to say, because clubs have to buy them. I talked to the guys at Pioneer…I’m very pedantic about these things. I put the CDJs and DVJs side-by-side and the DVJs are better. I met with the heads of Pioneer design from Japan and we were going over a prototype of the next Pioneer mixer and we’re going over different things about it. The DVJ seems more stable, and when you hit “play,” it cues up and loads faster. It hits the cue points faster. It’s just a stronger built piece of machinery. Also, Pioneer makes good, solid club effects in their mixers.

DJ Times: What other mixers do you like?

CL: Other mixers I like are Allen & Heath. The mixer I use now is the Pioneer DJM-800—it’s in my rider. No vinyl at all. It’s just not feasible to play vinyl because 99-percent of what comes out now is digital-only.

DJ Times: Last time we spoke, you were still buying vinyl and converting music to CD. Have you stopped buying vinyl altogether?

CL: I do all my shopping on Dancemusic.com, Beatport.com, all of it is shopping online. I just don’t have time to shop for vinyl. When I’m home, I spend time with my family. Every single track that’s produced is available online, plus I’m on thousands of mailing lists. Seventy-five percent of it’s not even relevant to me—I’ll get vocal-house things that would just not fit into what I’m doing. But, I go through and put the priorities into one mailbox, then a secondary drop into another mailbox.

DJ Times: That’s a lotta material to filter.

CL: The downside is that anyone can make a track and anyone can put it out. The guy who does bookings at Zouk in Singapore said to me, “In the old days, you had labels that would filter out vinyl and choose the records they could sell.” A lot of the crap got filtered out by people at the labels. There’s no filtering process now. It’s a level playing field, and it can make my job a nightmare.

DJ Times: You’re in the air a lot. What are some of your airplane habits?

CL: I read The Economist online and in print, religiously, on the plane every week. The other one is DemocracyNow.org, which is produced out of New York and is the best news organization I’ve found in the world. It’s a little bit left-of-center, but that’s where I am. Their reporting is far better than The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times, in my opinion. They do a streaming one-hour show online every day. It’s also shown on cable TV and as a one-hour radio show and podcast.

DJ Times: Have you dabbled in laptop DJing?

CL: I don’t use a laptop when I play out, no. I believe in playing the CDs and it being a more participatory event. When people come to hear a DJ play, they want to interact with the DJ and know that the show they’re seeing is unique and special. It’s special to me! When I look out, I tailor my set for that audience. There’s something about seeing a DJ flip through his CDs. It’s like, “Oh, the next track must be amazing—he’s been flipping around for so long!” For me, it’s an interactive thing. I’m about flipping through records and picking the next record. It’s rare that I play three tracks at once. The music I play is very rich and full, so I can’t layer that many sounds on top of each other or it gets muddy.

DJ Times: Last time we spoke, you were deep into the psy-trance scene. Are you still?

CL: I’ve been really diggin’ the progressive, psy-trance, yeah. There’s a lot of techno-trance where it’s cut back around and it’s really good, like Marco V and Sander van Doorn’s stuff. They’re not prog-house. They’re not techno. They’re very trance-y, but they’re not trance. I like that a lot. I play that earlier in the evening, then build from that. If I’ve got a nice, long, three-hour set, I go into a good hour of groovy psy-trance. You get into a groove and it doesn’t stop. I was in Vegas recently and they’re historically a drinking crowd—they don’t have patience for things to develop. But at 5 a.m., I went into the really groovy, bass-heavy psy-trance—at just the right tempo, it’s so groovy—and it was amazing to watch the crowd slide into it and stay into it! When I shifted into the energetic, epic trance, there was a noticeable disappointment. It was surprising for the Vegas crowd.

DJ Times: Where are the hotbeds of psy-trance, in your opinion?

CL: There are a lot of psy-trance producers out of Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela and Russia, although not a lot out of America. Those are the countries where psy-trance is most popular. Fortunately, we’ve had in L.A. the Electric Daisy Carnival, which had 60,000 people this past summer, and Nocturnal Wonderland, which got 50,000 people. Coachella is drawing huge numbers. For some reason, Southern California is allowed to have these gatherings.

DJ Times: Where do you record?

CL: When I’m doing original tracks, I work with Dave Audé in his fantastic studio in L.A. When I’m on tour, a lot of times I’ll go to the U.S. and book a few weeks off in between the parties to work with Dave on new music. Dave works with the Pussycat Dolls and other pop artists. Working with him is awesome. We can get artists like Jen Lasher and lay down tracks in two days.

DJ Times: What are you working on right now in the studio?

CL: I’m working on a new artist album! It’s not just about sitting in the studio and making another dancefloor hit. I’ve got a track with Stu Stone, who did “Breathe,” a really good track he did recently. He’s got an awesome voice. We’ve got this track called “Fake With The Funk.” The new artist album will hopefully be released this fall. “Fake” will be recorded as a single in the next couple of months.

DJ Times: How is your label Pharmacy doing?

CL: It’s doing really well. The most recent tracks coming out this month are by Sean J. Morris, an absolutely brilliant producer—he does music for film and TV. I’ve got another track coming called “Continuation,” which I gave to Sean and he made a remix that’s even better than the original.

DJ Times: Last time we spoke, you had signed Jay Selway and Magnus to Pharmacy. What other young talent are you into these days?

CL: Pharmacy’s also releasing music by Mark Oliver, who’s a resident at Guvernment in Toronto.

DJ Times: What advice do you give to aspiring DJs?

CL: Right now, opportunities are there for the local residents. Clubs can’t afford to fly the big guys, but a promoter can get the local guy who’s been busting his ass as opener to play the headlining set. There are a lot of quality DJs who are local. When I started out in L.A., I was local. The local DJs keep the scene alive. I meet these kids who are like, “I started mixing six months ago. Can you get me on tour with you?” [Sighs] It doesn’t work like that with my magic wand! You need to work for nothing and still love it enough to come back next week to play it again. Now’s the time to practice and rise above the crowd. You also have to produce. When I started out, it was about the party, and clubbers didn’t know which DJ was playing. Then, the party became about the DJs. Now, it’s about the producers.

DJ Times: What countries do you find especially vibrant?

CL: South America. I also did some amazing parties in Poland and Romania, in Eastern Europe. There was one in Romania with Ferry Corsten and a bunch of characters. There was an amazing stage setup, incredible production, and it was on the beach on the Black Sea! I had the sunrise set and you could see the waves coming, and everybody’s out on the beach. It was just beautiful. There are places like that in Eastern Europe.

DJ Times: How do you feel about the U.S. scene?

CL: I think it’s really strong. The secondary markets are suffering, but L.A. is going off. Every time I go there, there’s a new club opening. The major cities like San Francisco, L.A., Vancouver, Denver, Miami, Toronto. New York City is a tough one because of the laws, but it’s still going off there. The major cities are doing well and there’s that strong club vibe. It’s the smaller markets where a lot of clubs have had to shift to doing electronic nights on Fridays and Saturdays, and doing R&B on other nights. When you cut back on the number of nights you have dance music, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and the scene dies a little bit. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel—there’s a new wave of kids that like this music and there’s a whole new underground rave starting. The MySpace/Facebook phenomenon is helping kids connect and get together and do a party.

DJ Times: Seeing that you fly as often as you do, do you have any travel secrets?

CL: Number one is hand sanitizer! Airplanes are filthy. Number two is Super Flight Cream by Prescriptives [Estée Lauder]—that’s instant health for dehydrated skin. Flight attendants use it. My friend works in the cosmetics department at Vogue and asked [editor] Anna Wintour, and she uses it and it’s great. It goes on thin and absorbs quickly into the skin.

DJ Times: How do you see the future of the DJ?

CL: We’ve already seen a lot of DJs/live acts, and there’s the attraction of the band. But, people wanna go out and have a good time, and there’s something about a DJ playing that’s extremely unique. To go hear a DJ that plays a particular sound, there will always be a need for that. It’s the lowest common denominator with the mash-up thing—that’s not what I play and it’s not the audience I play to.

DJ Times: Your ideal audience?

CL: I want to play to the audience that’s coming out to hear something they’ve never heard before. They’re completely immersed in the music and when they hear a track they’ve never heard before, they turn to each other and smile.