Christopher Lawrence: 'Trance Messiah'?

by Cyclone Wehner

Los Angeles trance trailblazer Christopher Lawrence has now been a part of the West Coast underground for almost a decade. His early musical tastes covered alt-rock, indie and New Wave. Then he discovered imported European trance through record stores. This was his music. In the mid-90s the Berkeley University English graduate relocated with his Australian girlfriend Sara Joy (who is now his wife) to Los Angeles, as this city was more open to the music he loved to spin: trance and progressive house.

Over time Lawrence has made his own contributions to the genre. He has unleashed classic recordings like "Navigator", "Interceptor" and "Shredder". And Lawrence has also further popularised trance with the two mix-albums, "Rise (Fragrant music)" and "Temptation (City Of Angels)". He has also prepared a compilation of his own work for Scotland's Hook Recordings, his favourite global trance label. Then, somehow, Christopher still makes the time to work as the import vinyl buyer for LA's Street Sounds and editor of the trance section in "XL R8R", though, more often than not, he does it all via fax from wherever he is stationed around the world.

It's not hard to see why Lawrence is a favourite with the printed media. He is articulate, well-informed and whimsical. Christopher also comes across as genuine. Above all, he has a vision. "Urb" magazine just lately nominated him one of 'The Next 100'. Lawrence has been widely hailed as the 'Trance Messiah'. Yet he clearly doesn't know what to make of such a title. 'It really makes me cringe', he laughs. 'I mean, it's nice as a label and I'm flattered, but the thing is there's a lot of people making trance music and a lot of DJs. I don't see myself as the leader with a bunch of disciples. I get kinda embarrassed about that.'

Instead Lawrence simply regards himself as just one of those renegades at the forefront of a positive movement. He is gratified that the States is gradually opening up to dance music despite a pervasive conservatism towards any music other than rock. Lawrence keenly points out that today the US underground is growing all the time.

What does perturb Lawrence is the rise of trance music as a commercial force. It's not the obvious 'sell-out' factor that bugs him, though. He is specifically concerned about the increasingly fluid use of the word 'trance'. Lawrence has a valid argument. Of course, 'techno' has been encumbered with the same unhappy ambiguities.

So what does Lawrence feel is the difference between the trance he plays and the variety that is blowing up in the UK? 'Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because that is a thing that's really bothering me -- the sound that is popular in the UK and Europe right now poses as trance but it's really just commercial house. Commercial house has developed and then it's borrowed a little bit from trance. But those key change bass lines and those big epic breakdowns, they just make you feel like, "I was blind and now I see". [laughs]

'That's not trance. Now let's be really clear for all the readers: that's not trance! That is really frustrating for people like me -- DJs and musicians who have played trance for a long time. And now this sound comes around. A lot of people who have never heard trance before, they go to a commercial club and they hear this stuff and it's called 'trance', and they see these compilation CDs -- it says Trance Central or something -- and it's all these cheesy commercial house records. People will hear that for the first time and they'll think that's 'trance.' And then when someone like me comes to town the fliers will say, 'Trance Messiah,' and they'll think, "Oh, my God, this guy is gonna be playing all that music..." People will think that is what I must play because they think that's what trance is. And I don't play those records.'

Lawrence needs no prompting to describe the kinda trance he does like. He favours deep bass, percussive rhythms, spirited melodies and sonic textures. But, Christopher stresses, one element means more than anything else. 'I like bass lines! I guess it comes down to that. That's what I like about trance music: I like trance with bass lines. I tend to shy away from the kind of sparse trance music that just relies on melody lines and no bass. You need bass to move.'