Damian Lazarus - 'Smoke The Monster Out' (Get Physical/K7) Released 04/05/09

Crosstown Rebels label boss Damian Lazarus is best known for helping to shape the sound of contemporary techno in his twin roles as taste-making A&R and globally renowned DJ. ‘Smoke The Monster Out’ is Lazarus’ debut artist album and rather than being the usual collection of dance singles with big name vocalists, the result is thoughtful, considered and thoroughly engaging. Though Lazarus’s grounding in house and techno is apparent throughout, the album is more a song-based affair, full of unusual acoustic instrumentation and delicately wrought arrangements that come to fruition listen after listen.

Lazarus asked Arthur Jeffes – son of the Penguin Café Orchestra’s Simon Jeffes – and Classic Records boss Luke Solomon to help him construct songs that he sings on himself, investing the tracks with his own distinct personality and quiet expressiveness. ‘Neverending’ has all the twisted bleeps and bloops of one of his signature 2am head-**** tracks but his voice lifts things out of the club and into the daytime. ‘Moments’ begins like a nursery rhyme before building with all the sinister-notions of pushing Humpty Dumpty from his wall. Out on Get Physical, the album is idiosyncratic and direct: both the artwork (by Santiago Chaumont) and the title (which references Alice in Wonderland) evoke Lazarus’s interest in loss and the return of innocence.

Skewed electronic folk was perhaps an unexpected move from the now LA-based DJ, who lists his varied influences as Louis Armstrong, Jeff Buckley and Bjork, but it is these ballard-like moments that leave the most enduring mark. ‘Bloop Bleep’ is comedic as it lurches this way and that as if Lazarus has left Laurel & Hardy in a room with a bag of K and Animal House then filmed the results. Somehow it works though. As does the cover of Scott Walker’s ‘Its Raining Today’ which juxtaposes sorrow and beauty so perfectly that a mildly amusing analogy just won’t cut it.

The standard of Get Physical’s back catalogue is exemplary, so too is Lazarus’s reputation behind the decks and whilst this may not be the expected result of such a collaboration it does not disappoint. Lazarus has a vision, and he isn’t afraid to realise it.