Pete Lawrence (The Big Chill)- I'm Proud Of My British Heritage

"One of my great joys is discovering British heritage and sharing that with other people and one of the biggest joys of all of doing the Big Chill is discovering beautiful locations where we can do events and winning people's confidence to the point where we're allowed to do quite unusual locations. I'm proud of my British heritage and we try to reflect that through the choices we make."

Chatting down the line from his South London home, Big Chill organiser and visionary Pete Lawrence is an unlikely candidate for jingoistic patriotism though his brand of breast-thumping nationalism is intimately connected to his abiding love of music.

There are certain aspects of British culture that people seem almost ashamed of, take folk culture for example," he points out.

"I find folk culture interesting in the way that traditional songs and tunes are handed down through the generations to be reinterpreted- that's fantastic."

Chatting in between doing the school run and preparing for an upcoming DJ tour of Australia (where he'll be setting up a little corner of England at two of the Good Vibrations events), he also remains bullish about the rapid changes currently affecting nightlife.

"People will never grow tired of chilling out in its broadest sense, relaxation and open-mindedness will never go out of fashion, and I think the musical areas we cover are so broad that it's impossible to put a handle on them anyway," says Pete.

"We still cover everything from 4/4 house based party music to classical, easy listening, jazz, soul, hip hop, funk and reggae, er, electronica, ambient, folk, country and lots of other genres mixed in."


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Do you still feel a part of dance culture-

Pete Lawrence: "Not really, I see myself personally as someone who's into lots of different styles of music. I might have been into club culture when it started but I've also always been interested in traditional English folk music, it's hard to tie your colours to one mast when you've got such broad tastes."

Skrufff: Did you go through a rave period, thinking house music was going to change everything-

Pete Lawrence: "It's hard to look at the impact now though I did go through a period when I went to lots of parties and discovered new musical forms and for a while house music dominated my own tastes. But I think the Big Chill was one of the first instances of that culture broadening out. We started with DJs who were prepared to play non-beats music. When the club first started at Union Chapel (a converted church in Islington) the club's vibe was almost ambient because the music was largely beatless. Mixmaster Morris, in particular, was doing that with his sets and very quickly people started slotting film music and easy listening into their sets. Now if you look back on that period you can see how pioneering we were in opening things up musically, out of dance culture in a way."

Skrufff: How do you view the state of dance culture and music right now-

Pete Lawrence: "I see it as being more back in the hands of producers and I hope the new systems of distribution will be able to keep that democracy intact rather than concentrating it back in the hands of a few. Certainly in terms of events, I see what we're doing as being one way forward for people to meet up socially. I know it's only one weekend a year but we've built a whole Big Chill community that's thriving throughout the year. I think things are changing very quickly in the way that music is consumed and I'm not sure how things will develop but I hope the producer will be more actively involved in the process of getting their music directly to the consumer."

Skrufff: You host the Big Chill events as well as DJing at them, do you see yourself as a leader-

Pete Lawrence: "I consider myself to be part of the whole organisation though inevitably when you're making artistic choices you will be leading. I think it's been< Tags