Damian Lazarus | Show Preview

Each December, Resident Advisor—which is basically the electronic dance-music equivalent of online cool music publication Pitchfork—rounds up its favorite artists, albums, DJ mixes and labels in an epic end-of-the-year wrap-up. In 2011, a certain camp was clearly favored. With four of its acts in RA’s Top 10 DJs poll (including the No. 1) and with the No. 1 slot in Top Labels, Damian Lazarus’s Crosstown Rebels imprint had a big year.

Lazarus, who hails from the U.K., now operates out of L.A., where he’s steadily unleashing a torrent of underground dance music brilliance in the worlds of house and techno. Scene favorites Art Department, Jamies Jones and Deniz Kurtel call the label (and its accompanying booking agency) home.

Essentially, Lazarus has gathered a community of DJs and producers who pride themselves on taking the music places, most notably by breaking up techno’s stereotypical cold darkness with a soulful pop sensibility.

And this is just what Lazarus has spearheaded as a visionary A&R man. As a DJ, he need not rest on these laurels. He’s his family’s patron rule breaker, the man who originally put the rebel in Crosstown Rebels by splicing up his much-lauded sets with songs from a Disney soundtrack, to name but one example.

There’s no such thing as run of the mill when Lazarus spins. He’s been hailed as the lord of the underground, and that means hovering close to the edge of an ever-changing scene—and dropping what he finds in his DJ sets. Of course, quality house and techno rule, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be laced with that odd Vincent Price a cappella.