Disclosure on Sam Smith, ‘Lord of the Rings’ and the Dance-Music High Life

Before “Latch” made impact on the charts, Guy and Howard figured they would end up as session players or music teachers. But the song made them stars at home within weeks of its release, and it kept growing from there. “I think we played 57 festivals one year, plus our own live shows and DJ sets,” Guy says. “We worked our ass off for two years — and then, just as we thought it might wind down, we got a call from Jimmy Iovine: ‘I want to make “Latch” the biggest song of the summer.'”
Interscope’s then-chief — one of the most powerful people in the music business — had just witnessed Disclosure’s April 2013 Coachella performance in person. “I was really impressed,” Iovine tells me later. “These guys really have it. You’d have to be legally dead to miss it.”
With his help, Disclosure launched an even bigger American tour that sent “Latch” into Billboard’s Top 10 by the following July. The brothers became the pop face of the dance-music renaissance. “It was the most fun you could possibly imagine,” Guy says. “I’d drink a half bottle of tequila, then go onstage in front of 10,000 people singing our songs back to us as loud as they can, then go DJ in a club, then party all night with our friends. You have to pinch yourself: ‘How am I getting paid to do this?!'”
The brothers linger at Shoreditch House for the rest of the afternoon before heading to a high-end sushi spot for dinner. Once there, Guy confidently orders £356 worth of buttery yellowtail slices, succulent black cod chunks and other delicacies, and sends back a gin-and-tonic for being insufficiently fizzy. “I like to sample the fruits of the world,” he says. “I drink every day on tour. I’ve definitely nearly wet myself in DJ booths.”
“I like to sample the fruits of the world.” —Guy Lawrence
Howard, meanwhile, sips a virgin mojito: Unlike his brother, the younger Lawrence doesn’t drink. “I just don’t like it,” he says. “I want to be on my own when I drink, and what’s the point of that?” This means that Howard ends up skipping most of Disclosure’s legendary afterparties. He did, however, indulge when their debut LP went Number One in the U.K. “He had two pints of lager,” Guy says, relishing the tale. “He was absolutely wasted, grinding on Sam Smith on the dance floor.”
Neither brother has ever gotten into drugs, despite having copious access to any substance on earth. “All you see is the negative effects,” Howard says. “You have guys chatting about absolute bollocks in your ear all night, really loud, off their tits. Fuck that. I don’t want to be that.” “We’re the pussies of the dance-music scene,” Guy adds with a shrug. “I just want to live for a long time.”
They’d much rather talk about real estate — their favorite place to pour money, aside from touring equipment. “Bricks not banks, that’s what our mum and dad say,” says Guy, who bought a house in London last year but is already planning to rent it out and find a more spacious place. Howard is thinking along the same lines, only bigger: He’s got his eye on a medieval castle. “There’s only about seven in England that actually have a moat and aren’t owned by the Queen,” he says, entirely seriously. “One of them’s up for sale at the moment, but it’s really far away.”