Damian Lazarus has lost Monastic Studios. A lightning bolt struck the building and set off a chain of events that took the entire room with it. He shared the news himself, describing it as the destruction of a major part of his life and history.
The building is still standing. Lazarus had installed fire-resistant soundproofing, and that turned out to matter more than anyone would have planned for. The frame survived. The fire eventually starved itself out because there was no oxygen left inside the room. The soundproofing that was there to keep sound in ended up containing the fire too.
Monastic Studios sat in a forest in Tuscany. It is where he recorded Magickal, and where a significant amount of his work over the past decade came together. A room like that is not just equipment. It is years of setup, of knowing exactly how a space responds, of building something around how you actually work.
The one piece of good news is that his new single survived. Lazarus says the project is saved and will be released this year as planned.
His response to it was measured. He wrote that he is devastated, but reminded himself that everything is impermanent, and closed with a Buddhist line: “The barn has burned down. Now I can see the moon.”
Lazarus has been one of the more consistent figures in electronic music for over two decades. He founded Crosstown Rebels in 2003, a label that helped launch Maceo Plex, Jamie Jones and Francesca Lombardo. He created Day Zero in Tulum in 2012, built around the end of the Mayan calendar, and has since taken it to Mexico, Masada and beyond.
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