After dominating house music for the past several years, Chris Lake is officially out of goals.
The LA-based British producer has numerous hit records including Turn off the Lights, Beggin’, and Somebody, and released his debut album, Chemistry, in 2025. Through his label, Black Book Records, he gave early opportunities to Cloonee, Eli Brown, and other prominent artists. He recently collaborated with exciting up-and-comers such as ATRIP and Ragie Ban. Finally, he just played two massive headline shows at Los Angeles State Historic Park, selling 20,000 tickets each.
So, what’s left? He could push for a stadium headline. Or he could curate his own festival. But that’s not where his head’s at right now.
“Do I have any big goals? No. Not really. I’m in a nice spot at the moment where interesting things just keep coming towards me, rather than me having to go towards the good ideas,” Lake says. “Whichever ones seem the most interesting to me, fuck it, I’ll do that.”
Back when a 19-year-old Lake was putting out his first release in 2002 — a progressive house single called Santiago De Cuba — he had the opposite approach. He was chasing any opportunity he could find, making music on a PC with the now-niche DAW Sonic Foundry ACID. Santiago De Cuba got signed because he posted the track on the message board for the now-defunct underground UK label, Hooj Choons. Much to his excitement, its sublabel, Lost Language, was interested.
“I ended up spending months trying to perfect it, and then my computer crashed,” Lake says. “I lost the project, and I couldn’t recreate the song. The only file that I had was a 192K MP3. So I just converted it to a WAV and submitted that for mastering. That’s the version that’s out there. I didn’t want to lose my first record deal.”
Lake spent a lot of time on those message boards in his early years, listening to the “cool” music and doing his best to make something that sounded similar. Santiago De Cuba is still on Spotify (he didn’t know that until I told him), and so are many of his releases from the early to mid 00s. Scanning through will reveal a plethora of warehouse-friendly genres. Chemical Breaks is an acid breakbeat, and Filth is another deep progressive track.
On average, these initial releases have fewer than 30,000 Spotify streams, with some under 5,000. While stream counts are not directly indicative of quality, these are extremely low numbers compared to his new, more energetic cuts that have mostly broken a million. It was when he stopped putting any energy towards folding into others’ tastes that Lake 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.”
With his new approach, he’s getting tapped for Taylor Swift remixes and blowing way past any expectations he had for his career as a young producer. Some of his prized aspirations were having dance originators like Sasha & Digweed play his songs. Or perhaps playing 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.
After all, 24 years ago, few could fathom today’s audience numbers because dance music events simply weren’t that momentous or historic. Lake himself recently headlined Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the same stage where The Beatles, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead and countless other non-dance acts have performed. As a lifelong fan of dance music, he’s 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.”
Lake is equally happy to work with artists regardless of their success or genre. As seen on his regular Studio Sessions series on YouTube, he’ll invite his mates such as Sammy Virji and Chris Lorenzo (with whom he has 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’s the way it’s 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’s common to hear him make fun of himself. Calling initial ideas “shit” or “bro-y,” leaning into the stereotype that his fans are one giant legion of Hawaiian shirt-clad frat boys.
But then the final product becomes something like Reach For You, 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.”
Another element of his career he jokes about is how much money he’s “wasted” on gear. For anyone who might be hoping to find the secret weapon to the kind of Chris Lake bassline that leads to 20,000-cap headlines and hit records, it doesn’t 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 is sure to mention that people now have much fewer constraints than they used to. One specific element he discusses is the advance in stem separation. But it’s 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.
Harry Levin is a freelance journalist with credits in SPIN, Billboard, MusicTech, Grammy.com, Los Angeles Magazine, and more. His musical journey began 20 years ago with a Led Zeppelin CD. He played jazz trombone through college, produced large-scale electronic music events, and now spends his professional time writing and editing.
