Chris Lake has released his debut solo album, Chemistry, and he sits down to share why he gave the album that title, playing at Coachella with Fisher, the boisterous backstory of “Savana” and how the Gotye remix of “Somebody” came to life. He also dives into his work ethic in the studio, working with Bonobo and more!

What do you think of Chemistry? Let us know in the comments! 

Chris Lake: I wish I had a really fancy explanation for why I called this album Chemistry, but it just felt like it felt like the right word for the collection of the songs. It was one of the songs on the on the album, “Chemistry,” that I made with Vera Blue, one of my favorites. And I just thought it had a ring to it. So I ran with it.

For like, the last seven or eight years, I’ve been on a really good run with my songs and my tracks, and they’ve become really, like, effective in the clubs and like, but also, like, increasingly more simple and less and less and less like melody involved in them. It works really well in clubs, but I just had a vision of what I could be doing instead, and saw that that was one of the missions that I had for the album, was I really wanted to reconnect with the musicality that I I often write but don’t release.

I got to work on that with Amber Mark. I actually did … That was one of the songs I didn’t actually work in the studio with the artist. There’s not that many of them I got. I got given the a capella by a couple of the writers that worked on that vocal with Amber and as soon as I heard it, was like, it was an R&B track initially. And I kind of begged them. I was like, “Please give me that vocal. I got a vision for it,” and, you know, spoke to Amber, and she agreed and allowed me to mess around with my vision on it. And yeah, just kind of the vocals are bop. It’s really, really fun. 

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