In recent years, Pete has been best known as conceptualist and artistic programmer of the events company which has spawned a ground breaking festival, club event and London venues. The Guardian has described The Big Chill as “Britain’s premier youth culture and arts specialists”, The Times as “the leader in multi-media entertainment” whilst Time Out observed that “plenty of elements that we take for granted about contemporary club culture, from multimedia nights to innovative ambient listening, really stemmed from London based event The Big Chill.”

In the mid 80s, Lawrence became recognised as a respected tastemaker — with a flare for doing things differently — when he discovered and spontaneously recorded US folk singer Michelle Shocked on a walkman around a Texas campfire for his fledgling Cooking Vinyl label. The resulting album ‘The Texas Campfire Tapes’, with its £1 ‘field recording’ budget, went on to top the independent album charts in 1987 and sell over 250, 000 copies and establish the label at the forefront of the world and roots music scenes. Subsequently, Pete also became a writer, radio DJ and journalist and through the 90s he had regular columns in Top, Update and Jockey Slut as well as founding, editing and publishing his own On magazine. His latest writing was featured in the book ‘Crossfade - a Big Chill Anthology’ (Serpents Tail) and he released his first album as an artist under the name Chilled By Nature last year, which included guest musicians Mozez, The Swingle Singers and members of The Bays.

Pete was voted into Time Out’s Top 100 ‘movers and shakers’ a year ago, alongside the likes of Ricky Gervais, Gordon Ramsay, Madonna, Phillip Green, Brian Paddick, Ken Livingstone and Tony Blair. The magazine famously described him as “chief eskimo of kingdom chill”.

He is currently exploring new concepts, and updates will appear at www.petelawrence.net