Chris Lake has officially stopped setting big goals. The British producer, based in Los Angeles, is currently enjoying a position where interesting opportunities come to him rather than him chasing them.
His debut album, Chemistry, arrived in 2025. His label, Black Book Records, has supported artists like Cloonee and Eli Brown. He recently worked with newcomers ATRIP and Ragie Ban. Earlier this year, he sold 20,000 tickets for each of two headline shows at Los Angeles State Historic Park.
From chasing deals to accepting offers
When Lake was 19 in 2002, he released Santiago De Cuba on a PC using the now-niche Sonic Foundry ACID software. He posted the track on a message board for the underground label Hooj Choons. The sublabel Lost Language signed him.
He spent months perfecting the project before his computer crashed. He lost the file and could not recreate the song. The only version he had was a 192K MP3. He converted it to WAV and submitted it for mastering. That is the version that exists today. He did not want to lose his first record deal.
Those early releases appear on Spotify with fewer than 30,000 streams. Some have under 5,000. This is low compared to his recent energetic cuts, which have mostly broken a million. Lake stopped trying to fit into other people’s tastes when he found his real audience.
“When I was younger, that underground mentality was intentional. That was me trying to fit in,” Lake admits. “I abandoned that shit years ago.”
Under his new approach, he has been tapped for Taylor Swift remixes. His career surpassed expectations he had as a young producer. Earlier aspirations included having dance originators like Sasha & Digweed play his songs. He also hoped to play to 1,000 people at a UK superclub where attendees were more interested in the brand than the DJ.
“When I think about the very early days as a music producer, none of those thoughts or visions or dreams even come close to anything that I’m doing right now. I say it to my manager and my team. How the fuck are we doing this shit?” Lake says.
Twenty-four years ago, few could imagine today’s audience numbers because dance music events were not that momentous. Lake recently headlined Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The Beatles, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead and countless other non-dance acts have performed there. As a lifelong fan of dance music, he is thrilled that everyone involved in the culture can take part in this current mass appeal.
“There’s a real impression being made by dance music on a much bigger scale. An artist like myself who can make beats and end up connecting to 10,000 people, turning up to a cutout in a mountain to dance for hours. That’s pretty fucking special,” Lake says. “Some artists in the scene find it challenging [to] see new artists being popular. It can be easy to compare success within a scene; I just think that’s a terrible way of looking at it. It makes me really happy seeing artists go on and become successful.”
Tools and constraints
Lake works with artists regardless of their success or genre. His regular Studio Sessions series on YouTube invites mates such as Sammy Virji and Chris Lorenzo. They have the side project Anti-Up. Stalwarts seemingly way outside his house music sound, such as Bonobo and Dillon Francis, have shown up. The videos have also been a way to put on rising stars, such as MPH. He acknowledges the cliché that making music is just about having fun for him, but that is the way it has always been.
“I know a lot more. I’m old now, but genuinely, making music, I feel exactly the same today as I did the first time I made music. And I approach it exactly the same way. I just feel like a kid again. It definitely keeps me young until I look in the mirror,” Lake jests.
Some of his studio session videos are almost eight hours long. Skimming through them, it is common to hear him make fun of himself. He calls initial ideas “shit” or “bro-y,” leaning into the stereotype that his fans are one giant legion of Hawaiian shirt-clad frat boys.
Then the final product becomes something like Reach For You. This is a dreamy cut off Chemistry that combines the ethereal voice of Kelly Lee Owens with precisely swung arpeggios and burning sonic sheets over both a garage and 4/4 beat.
“What’s firing off in my head is the same,” Lake says of his current mindset compared to his earlier days. “I just have more tools and experience to get from an idea to a finished composition. That’s probably the biggest difference.”
He jokes about how much money he has “wasted” on gear. For anyone hoping to find the secret weapon to the kind of Chris Lake bassline that leads to 20,000-cap headlines and hit records, it does not come from a new purchase. In fact, he recommends the exact opposite.
“One of the best things you can ever do is to try and make something with the constraints that you have,” Lake says. “Do something with what you’ve got. See how fun you can make it.”
He notes that people now have much fewer constraints than they used to. One specific element he discusses is the advance in stem separation. But it is certainly a give and take.
“There’s nothing that you can’t sample. There’s no idea that you can’t tap into. You’re gonna get some phenomenal beats that are familiar, because it’s a remix of an old track from the 70s that no one had the stems for before,” Lake says before a concise caveat: “The consequence of it is, there aren’t a lot of people out there at the moment writing any new ideas—picking up a microphone and recording something. There’s a really great opportunity for people who are committed to being creative to write things and actually stand out.”
Chris Lake is already standing out, but perhaps the burgeoning artists out there should set the goal of making their mark with something only they can create.
