Damian Lazarus- Fashion is Fun But this ts Serious Music...

"I love what I do, and that's what it boils down to. I love playing records, I love partying and I love working with artists and producers that have a similar way of thinking to me."

Sitting in a private members' bar in Soho on a Monday afternoon, Crosstown Rebels chief Damian Lazarus is keen though cautious as he outlines his philosophy.

"I don't claim to be anything I'm not, I'm not sitting here saying I'm the best DJ in world, because I'm not," he continues.

"I'm not trying to mould myself into some huge star celebrity, I'm just trying to live my life having a job that I love doing, as opposed to having to settle for doing something else, because I can't afford to live through music."

His reasons for caution perhaps relate to his own journalistic background (including a stint as music editor for fashion bible Dazed & Confused) which prompt him to ask, post-interview, whether we're hoping to stitch him up (we're not). More likely, though, it's our questions about his recent interview with DJ magazine in which he declared 'if Paul Oakenfold can get thirty grand a gig playing shit- and sorry Paul, I've heard you play- then anyone can') that make him suspicious ('I'm also not interested in slagging off too many people," he says).

What he is keen to talk about is music, specifically the new electro-disco-punk style music that's been bursting out all over club-land since the new millennium kicked in.

"This is serious music, extremely serious and I use the word in every sense," he stresses.

"It's deep, it's intelligent, it's quite futuristic and it's pushing the boundaries forward of what you can and can't do with music."

He's also unsure of what to call 'it'; 'for me it's just good quality underground electronic dance music, EUD-', he quips, clearly highly conscious of the dangers of labelling.

"It's difficult to pigeonhole and these are the problems a lot of scenes have fallen into, in the past, after being immediately given a name,' he says.

"The media then have built it up, over-exposed it then knocked it down when the next fad has come along. And I don't think this style of music is a fad, it's a continuation and a furthering of what we've all been doing for so long."

The scene he's referring to was briefly called 'electroclash', though the media's gleeful, though ultimately failed attempt to destroy it almost took out Damian as collateral damage too. As one of its key champions and talent spotting tastemakers, he introduced key tracks like Felix Da Housecat's Silver Screen and Tiga's Sunglasses At Night via his former label City Rockers, before almost bowing out in a blaze of glory when Fischerspooner's (relative) failure made him indirectly consider taking up accountancy.

12 months later though, he's not only circling the globe crossing paths with close contemporaries Tiga, Ivan Smaghhe and Ewan Pearson, but also running new label Crosstown Rebels, the vehicle for his excellent new mix CD Rebel Futurism Session One. A CD, he's justifiably proud of.


Skrufff: (Jonty Skrufff): The press release opens with the line 'Rebel Futurism is one of the first compilations to bring together the essence of this new movement', what exactly is the essence of this movement-

Damian Lazarus: "Firstly, I didn't write the press release but I do think there is a new movement, though it's extremely underground right now. It involves a group of like-minded individuals, all roughly the same age and from similar backgrounds, from various different European capitals, who've all individually decided to take dance music by the scruff of its neck and do something new. And we seem to be linked invisibly, though quite intricately, I'm thinking of people like Black Strobe, Rob Mello, Steve Bug, these kinds of characters. They've slowly but surely been doing their own thing for some time but they're now slowly but surely starting to penetrate the mainstream. It's a new form of house music, one tha Tags