Cristina Lazic flexes her production skills on Rebellion. Following her first EP on the imprint called Burning, the shesaid.so affiliate delivers a minimal techno-flavoured EP titled Personal. She teams up with Italian-born vocalist Shar to pen a beautiful, dancefloor-driven EP, conveying emotive vocals paired with smooth and sleek production.
Born in Milan but raised in London, Cristina Lazic started out playing the piano as a child and has since evolved into an electronic artist in demand. The shesaid.so member has released on several esteemed imprints, including Crosstown Rebels’ Rebellion, Bondage Music and Creature Records. As a DJ, she combines dark and sultry techno with uplifting house textures, rumbling the walls of Hï Ibiza, Magazzini Generali in Milan and Le Salon Daomé in Montreal. Cristina hosts frequent radio shows on Ibiza Global and Sonica and leads the parenthood committee of shesaid.so, focusing on safeguarding the interest of artists with children. Despite balancing multiple roles, including a job in tech and motherhood, music remains centric to Lazic’s output.
Hey Cristina, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. Where are you in the world today?
My pleasure – I am currently in London as I have a gig here tomorrow, at Koko with Damian Lazarus!
You are currently based in Milan, what is it about these cities that draw you to stay there?
Milan is my hometown and a city that makes me very proud. I lived in London for over ten years and I am quite happy to be back here after living across the UK, Spain and the US for a long time. I like my city as it’s an international city, full of vibrant moments like fashion and design weeks and that has an excellent location. In fact, Milan is very close to the seaside, the Alps and beautiful lakes – which can be easily reached by car in less than 1.30hrs. I moved back to Milan in 2019 as I feel it offers the right compromise between the hectic rhythm of big cities like London, and the chilled mediterranean lifestyle. Being based in Milan helps me also with boosting my creativity, as I often “escape” to the nearby nature and this is when I normally dedicate time to produce.
Your first EP with Rebellion was titled “Burning” and was released in March this year. Does this EP feel like a sequel to that EP or an entire new story?
Indeed! My first EP was a nice combination of tracks, one of which was “Mirror” – my first experiment with Shar, a female vocalist I met thanks to shesaid.so. I consider Personal to be a nice sequel to Burning as, in my latest EP, you can find 3 of the 4 tracks that were made in collaboration with Shar. One of them is a remake of “Mirror”, which I redrafted so that it could be used as a set opener. The other tracks are “Personal”, the lead track and “You and me”. The remaining track, “Feel the groove” is a track with a male vocal but that nicely complements the EP. As for “Burning”, I wanted to provide a variety of moods in the EP, and in fact I am receiving pretty balanced feedback across the 4 tracks. The same happened with Burning, which makes me actually happy; I like the fact that there is not just one track that stands out but that all tracks are quite equally appreciated, depending on people’s taste.
What was the inspiration behind ‘Personal EP’ and what was the creation process like?
In the tracks I produced with Shar, we wanted to cover the topic of female empowerment. There are not many female producers in minimal and deep tech music, which is the electronic music genre I’d mainly play and produce. With these tracks we wanted to depict fierce, strong women who explore their own identity by covering a variety of key themes such as self reflection, time and space. As to the production process, with Shar we held a few days of production work at the Metrica studio in Ibiza, where we have used some production bases I had created (normally with repeated syths used as atmosphere, drum rack elements and basslines) and brainstormed on potential themes and lyrics together. We then recorded Shar’s vocals and added some elements like guitar organ riffs. Then, I finished off the tracks on my own by adding the final touch like pads, effects, and improving the groove.
Do you have a philosophy behind the music you produce?
Yes, as mentioned earlier in my own tracks you’ll normally find groovy basslines with synths that repeat throughout the track. It may sound monotonous but I actually like to have the synths as part of an atmosphere that, in my opinion, improves the groove and gives it a melodic touch. Normally my beats are minimal / deep “housy”, but I think that what gives them a “Cristina Lazic” touch is the fact that, despite being quite minimal, there is always melodic component. In fact, I’d say my tracks are between minimal deep tech and melodic vibes and they can nicely fit in both of these genres. I started producing in 2020, so I am still in the process of learning more techniques but it makes me very satisfied to hear that people can recognize my style in my tracks; I feel quite accomplished for being able to identify my own identity in my production – which goes back to the topic of self reflecting on your own identity, mentioned above.
You are a DJ & producer, marketing manager at Google, a mother, and an advocate for safeguarding the interests of artists with children at She.Said.So. How do you balance all these different roles in your life?
I basically try to just go for it and do everything, without thinking about it too much.
Now that music is going quite well and production has properly kicked off, it’s starting to get a bit demanding to manage it all as I don’t only do gigs, I also produce and am getting more and more requests to make remixes, provide demos, promote releases etc.. and I really want to honour these requests as music is my passion. However, currently I am managing it all by being very organised and very focused on work. On a typical day, I wake up early to take my daughter to school, I do calls with my Google job during the day and I work on music (whatever that means) at night. For example, I am responding to this interview at night! I work with shesaid.so in my “free” time, normally reserving approx 1 hr per week to focus on this important community work. The SSS parents committee is made of myself and other 2 mothers, so we try and help each other when we have less time from personal commitments. In general I rest very little, and don’t have a lot of time for myself.. Which is something I want to improve. But the satisfaction that music gives me compensates for the tiredness, and actually gives me a lot of energy (especially after gigs), so currently I don’t feel that it’s a problem to do it all.
Where can we see you perform before the end of the year?
Well, tonight in London at Koko should be a good one! Looking forward to seeing many friends, as I lived here for so long and feel like London is my second home. I am then heading to Dubai next week, then will have a variety of gigs in Italy (a bit everywhere) and later in the year I’ll perform at XP in Saudi Arabia. I expect more gigs to be announced, so watch my socials for more info!
Thank you for your time and we are looking forward to hearing more music from you in the coming years!
Thank you!
Buy it now on Beatport https://www.beatport.com/release/personal-ep/3857772