About
“Chrissy is one of the best DJs to ever walk the earth and I am just going to keep saying it until everyone agrees with me.” — The Blessed Madonna
“Chrissy is one of my favourite people in music. He’s not only extremely talented and a walking talking dance Encyclopedia, he is also someone whose stance I really respect…he actively tries to debunk the gatekeeper mentality that dance music is sadly still haunted by, all with a really constructive approach and positive attitude, truly opening doors for newer blood.” — Violet
We live in an age where telling stories has never been more important. Chrissy is a genre-bending DJ/producer with releases on Classic, 17 Steps, Dansu Discs, Super Rhythm Trax, Chiwax, Freerange, Razor N Tape and many more. He specializes in rave-influenced sounds, Chicago house and disco, but his two-decade career to date has ranged from jungle to footwork to freestyle, with gigs at Panorama Bar, Smartbar (where he held a residency from 2015- 2018), and across Europe into his residency at San Francisco’s oldest and most storied queer club, The Stud. “It’s a gay bar that’s been around since 1966, where Sylvester and The Pointer Sisters played some of their first shows. It’s collectively owned now, and it feels like one of the most accepting and diverse nightclubs that I’ve been to. The crowd is often really mixed in terms of gender, race, sexuality, economics, and age. So you see a diverse group of people all partying in one place—the ideal that we pretend dance music is most of the time—it’s a little closer to that.”
Musically speaking, diversity is what he does best. “I like so many different types of music, and I feel stifled if I’m only playing one genre at a show. I’ve tried to build a reputation for more than one type of music, so when people come to see me I might play New Order or I might play jungle, or both!” He has a list of influences and dream collaborators a mile long, but some of his first picks would be Pet Shop Boys, Patrice Rushen, Roisin Murphy, and Kylie Minogue. Chrissy has stayed busy, signing new music to Sorry Records (with remixes from Violet & Bianca Oblivion), and a new Pets Recordings EP (with Vonda7 & The Carry Nation remixes). And finally, his new LP Physical Release has just been released by Sherelle and the Hooversound crew, and recently coming back to the UK soon to promote that on NTS, Rinse FM & Soho Radio and play some shows at fabric & The Cause for Adonis. This eleven-track sonic odyssey spans not just the past three decades but also all of Chrissy’s club influences and moods. “These songs were inspired by our scene’s physical spaces: the warehouses, clubs, record stores, late night cafes, lofts, and friends’ livingrooms that let us connect to each other, experience the joy and wonder of dance music culture, and find our family.” And if that isn’t just the best way to look at a life lost in music, we don’t know what is: the deep, deep bassline and sweet soul of ‘Lost In A Dream’
encapsulates that feeling perfectly. And ‘The Map Point’ continues the story from there, a bleepy, Prodigy-style rave revival instrumental with a melody all its own. This is music for loud sweaty clubs and lounging house heads alike: and if ‘All The
True Ravers’ doesn’t take you back to London’s Blue Note club in Shoreditch with Goldie and LTJ Bukem in ‘96, then we don’t know what will. Smart and articulate, Chrissy is also a well-regarded voice on dance music history—he ran the popular “My Year of Mixtapes” and “My Year of Edits” blogs, posting original genre-focused DJ mixes and disco edits every week for a year. He wrote the liner notes for Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986- 1997, and has written about dance music history for RBMA, XLR8R and Electronic Beats. He also runs two house music record labels: The Nite Owl Diner and Cool Ranch. Where did all this come from, we wonder? “I’ve always been that type of person, digging in the record store and finding new things. Growing up I would always be in the dollar bins, and maybe I’d notice the typesetting on a record that would remind me of a record from Belgium that I liked that used the same fonts, and it turns out they were on two labels owned by the same company. So always keeping an eye out for connections like that, so I wouldn’t miss a bargain, evolved into wanting to know everything I could about this music that I love. It all came out of necessity.”
“I really do pride myself on certain things,” he attests. “I pride myself on arrangement, and song structures that work for a club as well as Spotify or the car. Sequencing a record is so important,” explains Chrissy on mid-morning call from San Francisco. “Shep Pettibone is one of the best arrangers of pop music in the post-disco era. François K. has been a big influence as well. To find someone who is a better arranger than them, you’d really have to go back to the 1960s.” See, not only is Chrissy a waking dance music recovery manual, he’s also earned the right to a thousand and one daily observations. And while he’s a humble house music aficionado, he’d be the first to agree. “It’s the way I show how much I care about this stuff. And the music is always interesting but the stories behind the music are just as fascinating.”
“As for DJing, I pride myself on having the technical side down but also having a narrative throughout the set, whether that’s playing vocal songs where the lyrics work with each other, or being able to flip from genre to genre through a set.” Chrissy cites Larry Levan (of course) as well as Roy Thode, another New York disco DJ “who was really good at slick transitions, but also would play a whole set where the vocals really built a narrative.”
Finally, we can’t stop without discussing one of his most ardent supporters, The Blessed Madonna, who he recently chatted with on her BBC 6 radio show. “We came up in that Chicago scene together. The bar of talent there is really high and it’s a great place to learn and do the best work that you can do. It was a really cool time and place to be in my early years as an artist. And Smart Bar was a pretty fun place to be a resident, but now I am in San Francisco… and I haven’t looked back. I don’t miss it but it was definitely the right place to move to San Fran. San Francisco, the scene is really strong and there’s been a renaissance here. There are good musicians and venues and parties.” With the stories behind his favourite music providing constant inspiration and the dream of dancefloor utopia still on his mind, it’s clear that Chrissy is still on a mission.