Smoke the Monster Out

VINYL FORMAT. Londoner Lazarus, now based in L.A., is best known for founding the Crosstown Rebels label and helping shape the sound of contemporary techno in his twin roles as taste-making A&R and globally renowned DJ. Having been asked on countless occasions when he would step out from behind the decks and into the producer's chair, Lazarus has finally capitulated - and the results are far more unusual and engaging than what anyone could have imagined.

It would have been easy, or at least expected, for Lazarus to make a strictly instrumental, dancefloor-oriented album, perhaps enlisting the help of "celebrity" vocalists to flesh it out - but Smoke the Monster Out is a far more ambitious and considered project than that. First up, it really is an album, a rangy and cleverly paced narrative inspired chiefly by the dancefloor's play of darkness and light, but also classic love songs and emotive, gut-wrenching pop music old and new.

Though Lazarus's grounding in house and techno is apparent through-out, this record is really a song-based affair, full of unusual acoustic instrumentation and delicately wrought arrangements, which Lazarus wrote with collaborator Athur Jeffes - son of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Simon Jeffes. The Rebels boss has taken a long view of his life as a music-lover, drawing on older influences as diverse as Photek, Jeff Buckley and Bjork, taking their essence and suffusing it with the twisted dance floor alchemy we associate with his DJ sets. Perhaps most significantly, not to mention surprisingly, Lazarus himself sings on several of the album's tracks, investing his songs with his own distinct personality and quiet expressiveness. This is Damian Lazarus as you've never heard him before. Lazarus has a vision, and isn't afraid to realize it.