Chris Lake

Chris Lake is a British house music producer and DJ.  Best known for commercial vocal house hits such as ‘Changes’ and ‘Carry Me Away’ Lake also has a strong track record for a more underground sound.  Lake runs his own record labels Rising Trax and Rising Music.

Early Years: 2001 to present

Born in England and now based in West London, after a period in Scotland, Chris Lake is one of the bigger names in the UK electro house scene.  His productions range from pop cross-over through to dance-floor minimal and he has a host of chart successes to his name.

Some of Lake’s earliest releases were bootleg remixes of The Prodigy's ‘Climbatize’, Leftfield's ‘Phat Planet’, and the Eurythmics ‘Sweet Dreams’, under the production alias Cristophe D'Abuc.  His first own production release was in 2001 with ‘Bring the Acid’ as Immobile Disco (Rocksteady Records).

His career built steadily with well over a dozen releases and remixes between 2001 and 2005.  Also in 2005 he set up his two record labels Rising Trax and Rising Music. But his Lake’s breakthrough came in 2006 with the single ‘Changes’ featuring Laura V on vocals (Alternative Route Recordings).  ‘Changes’ was unashamedly commercial, featuring a big piano riff, a powerful vocal hook and a funky electro bass-line. ‘Changes’ peaked at number 27 in the UK singles chart and topped the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay Chart.  By the time he had released ‘If You Knew’ in 2009 (Rising Music) he had scored four consecutive top ten singles on this US chart.

Lake followed ‘Changes’ with a number of similarly successful radio-friendly vocal electro house tracks, such as ‘Carry Me Away’ with Emma Hewitt on vocals (Rising Music 2007) and ‘Only One’ (Rising Music 2008).  But while Lake’s best known productions were mainstream and commercial, his DJ sets had a darker more underground edge, a sound which is also seen in some of Lake’s less well known tracks.  These include releases such as the ‘Mistakes’ E.P. withSébastien Léger (Rising Music 2006) and ‘I Said’ with Deadmau5 (Mau5trap Recordings 2010).

Lake’s collaboration with Deadmau5 was just one part of a long term close relationship between the two.  Deadmau5’s breakthrough track ‘Faxing Berlin’ was championed by BBC Radio 1’s Pete Tong after having been passed to him by Lake.  

Lake released his first studio album ‘Crazy’ (Nervous Records ) in 2009.  The following year he tipped his hat to the minimal house bandwagon with the dark and sparse ‘Minimal Life’ (Rising Music).  Also in 2010 he released a studio album ‘Cross the Line’ with Marco Lys (following the success of their 2009 upfront house track ‘La Tromba’).  

During the course of the noughties Chris Lake built a successful career and profile as cross over dance music producer.  Hits such as ‘Changes’ and ‘Carry Me Away’ made Lake a commercial success but the commercial label has never sat entirely comfortably with Lake, as illustrated by his eagerness to focus on the underground, darker sound of his DJ sets and less mainstream releases.  Lake’s star is in the ascendancy and his hard gigging approach to DJing will help him gain further success.

Originally born in Norwich, England, Chris Lake later moved to Scotland where he worked as a postman.