LZ7 | Conversations between the Café and the Crowd
Gemma West interviewing LZ7 ahead of supporting Jason Derulo at the Co-op Live, Manchester – Saturday 7th Feb 2026
Late afternoon rain splattered the pavement outside Manchester’s Co-op Live, turning the walkways silver as fans gathered in clusters, already queuing hours before doors. Mini skirts, bold technicolours, arms looped through friends, and the low buzz of anticipation decorated the arena walls. For many, tonight felt big – and it showed.
A few metres away from the growing swell of pop spectacle, I was tucked inside the canalside café, waiting to meet Lindz, Leon and Louis of LZ7. Leon was first in. We exchanged the usual pleasantries: the hunt for the café, the rain, the ritual complaint that passes for an introduction in quintessential Britain.
Louis arrived minutes later and we settled in. Once coats were off, talk turned to everyday listening habits: music for concentration, comfort, switching off. Classical came up, then lo-fi, then rock and metal, and finally a debate about how wide the definition of R&B has become. The café clattered on around us, but the table felt relaxed.
Before walking in, the phrase “Christian electronic dance music group” had left me wary. I’ll admit it. I half-expected something preachy, maybe even severe – a tight message for a narrow audience. I wondered how it would land in an arena crowd here to see Jason Derulo. Yes, he’s open about faith, but the pairing still puzzled me.
Online, I’d read about missionary roots, crisis work, talk of God threaded through their history. What I hadn’t expected was genuine warmth, comfortability, humour, or how disarmingly normal it would all feel. Within minutes, the image I’d built of them had dissolved. In its place: three friends swapping playlists, sharing desire for connection, genuine impact, and preparing, in a few short hours, to try and lift an arena.
I switched the recording on, and we were straight into it:
I have to ask you: I find myself sitting in front of Louis, Lindz and Leon, missing your fourth member ‘Lee’, making up LZ7: is the L thing a dealbreaker, it feels too eerie of a coincidence??
(laughter) “Yeah. The only way to join LZ7 is an L.”
So explain the name to me, because the internet gave me absolutely no clues?
So, number seven means completion. If you look back into things like Greek theology and that kind of stuff, the number seven always meant something was complete. Seven days in a week, that sort of idea.
But there’s another meaning for us. In military language, a landing zone in opposition territory is where you go to take something back.
Because we work with so many young people around mental health, we’ve had people hand us suicide notes. And in those moments we’re like, we’re grabbing you back. We’re bringing you back to life. So yeah, there’s a lot in the name.
I love that.
So, it’s wonderful to see you back supporting Jason Derulo again almost eight years on. When you first got the call, what was that like - surprised?
Yeah, absolutely. It was an absolute yes. No question.
“Okay, Jason, fine. I’ll do it. Stop begging”
Oh yeah. Sorry, twist my arm Jason. (all laughing)
It was an absolute - drop everything, let’s do this.
The first time we toured with him, we built a relationship with the dancers and the crew. They loved the way we warmed the crowd up. A year later we went to his house and recorded five songs for our album there, so it became a real friendship.
So when this tour came up, I [Lindz] said I’m going to do it the right way. I texted his manager on Christmas Eve and asked, ‘Is the UK open?’ He came back and said, ‘It’s wide open. We’d love you to.’
And this all got booked in about three weeks ago.
Three weeks?!
Literally. So it was like: boys, we move. Plus, we’ve got loads of new music we want to test out. Perfect opportunity to do it, yeah.
Really, you operate as something much bigger than a traditional band. Where did that mission start?
So Lewis and I [Lindz] started out years ago, like years ago. And our first gigs [were] going to prison with some young offenders up here. We’d been working for an organisation… I’d been working for an organisation that works in a city with some tough kids, tough schools, but you could see the music having an impact.
And then we turned up to these young offenders, and Lewis is a DJ, and I was like, “Just play some beats. Play, and we’ll just bar over the top. Then we’ll put some LZ7 stuff in between.” Thinking, this is gonna go really wrong. Like, it could go pear-shaped.
But the whole place was vibing within about three minutes. Everybody’s up out of a seat enjoying it. And you realised that the message of hope, the message of positivity, and the message of lifting your head above the horizon doesn’t just stop with a concert.
It's an attitude for every single young person, especially the hardest to reach in a prison. And the music cuts through that kind of universal language of heritage, background and difference. And we just managed to speak a bit of positivity into their lives, to the point where one of the lads came up and he said, “Look, I’m trapped in myself for 23 hours a day. You had us for an hour, and you turned me into a 12-year-old boy.”
And we were just like… ah. That’s it. That’s the power of music.
So the commission side of it was: we started a high school tour called Illuminate off the back of a lot of this prison tour stuff. Into a high school, to then take that same message without diluting it or turning it down, just saying there’s so much to life that you can dream about, you can live for; you don’t have to give up on life. A lot of our stuff is anti-suicide, mental health, wellbeing, purpose, lifting aspirations with young people. But there were always people asking “Why did you go there?” And I was like, “Well, that’s where we need to be.”
That’s where the hardest kids have made the toughest decisions, now in the toughest place. Let’s lift in, and then take it out.
It’s really refreshing actually, because so much of the industry can feel wrapped up in fame and glory and wanting to be adored. Do you change how you perform or behave depending on the audience?
I’ve [Leon] been here for five years. And in the time that I’ve been here I’ve seen the music evolve, but also the consistency of the audience; the kids kind of stay the same. It’s just about what the guys are into and what they’re trying to experiment with, and what kind of vibe they’re trying to get.
We figure out how to try and warm up the audience for a headline, or if we’re doing our own show the whole set would be slightly different, a bit more dynamic and a bit more… you know what I mean?
We tweak things, but the heart stays the same. Culture changes every few miles. Bristol might be heavy drum & bass, London might lean grime. If we’re in schools, we mix in tracks they know so there’s something familiar. But the songs don’t massively change. It's the edits, intros,
bootlegs. It keeps it fresh for us too. If you did the same thing the same way every night, you’d go mad.
I guess that kind of responsiveness stops it ever becoming routine? Exactly. The music feels huge, but it also feels personal.
We’ve got a song in the set called New Horizon. The chorus has been there for five or six years. It’s about lifting your head: there’s more to life, don’t give up. With everything young people are facing now, it just felt like the right time.
I [Lindz] nearly crack when I sing it, because it’s personal to me as well. You can see people in the crowd going, yeah, I feel that. And that’s important, because just because you’re on stage doesn’t mean you don’t go through stuff.
100 percent. If you’re not feeling what you’re making, then what’s the point?
Exactly.
Your music, as well as pushing a greater message, feels personal. How do you find the balance between artistic licence, personal experience, and faith when you’re producing and writing music?
That’s a good question. So I’ll take ‘New Horizon’ as an example: It’s all about lifting your head. Look above the clouds, look to a new horizon. There’s so much more that life can give you. It’s about the message of not giving up.
But it’s still got that thing of: if you couple what you put your faith in with what you put your hope in, those two things become game changers. You can lift your head and 2025 might have been an absolute shocker. 2026 could still be really difficult. But let’s lift our heads. Let’s take a different trajectory. That’s gone. There’s new days yet to come. What choices am I going to make to bring myself a newer idea?
There’s a voice note on my table from eight years ago: it’s the same chorus. It’s not until you come to a point where you go, this could be a really good track to bring out now.
You’re coming out of a pandemic. Not that we’re out of a pandemic; we’re in a pandemic of mental health and low self-esteem among young people. So I’m like, what do we do? What can we do to lift people’s heads so they walk out feeling a little bit better about themselves?
And then you couple that with the faith questions, believing in something bigger than yourself. Whatever it is you believe in. Obviously I’m sort of churchy, but whatever it is, where are you going to take that? How’s that going to change your decisions and your impact on your life to make you the best version of you?
That’s when you feel the connection with the audience. Because you can see them going, yeah, I feel that. You’re in the same boat as us, not just because you’re on the stage.
When did you realise you were making a difference?
You kind of see it all the time. When we do school tours and see how they respond afterwards: they’re giving in their suicide notes or come with an emotional story or whatever. So, yeah, it’s stuff like that for me.
I [Louis] think one of my favourite things is when you first walk out on stage, people are like, “What’s that?” And then suddenly you can see the joy, the smile, their faces… and this joy comes on their face like: I’m given permission to rave.
I remember one guy in London at the O2, big six foot five lad, and he’s just keeping the energy so high. And you can see him and he’s a dad. And we don’t know what he’s been through, we don’t know what’s going on in his life, but for that moment he’s just going… just relief.
There’s always that moment in the set where you wouldn’t expect this audience to really quiet down, and you can see their eyes light up with the words - you can see it land. That realisation they’re not alone.
That must feel powerful, especially when there are people in that room who may have never come across you when they walked into it?
Yeah, especially when we’re playing unreleased tracks.
Is it scary testing new material in rooms that size?
Massive risk. We look at each other like, is this working? And then you see them jumping… And kind of go - ok, yeah — it’s working.
If something goes wrong on stage, who fixes it?
Nathan [their manager]. If anything goes pear-shaped, you’ll hear a Mancunian voice cutting through telling us what’s happening.
But honestly, we’re family. Wives, kids, everyone comes along on school tours. We’ve always got each other’s backs.
Three words: what’s an LZ7 show?
Rave. Energy. Depth.
… and loads of bangers.
You tried to sneak an extra one in there. I’ll allow it.
(laughs)
Finally: how do you want people to feel when they leave tonight?
Hope. We want them walking out with their heads high, feeling like a million dollars. Like “I can do something here. I’ve got a purpose. I can be someone. I can be a game changer.” Whatever environment they work in / live in, to make that change of trajectory in their life towards something positive.
We get messages all the time from people saying they went for the job or started the course or made a different decision. That’s the point.
We share faith in a way that’s relevant to them , just so there is something out there. You are here on purpose for a reason. Music coupled with that.
I really resonate with that: oftentimes, education systems fail to place importance on how people are feeling, how to find true joy or purpose, how to practise self-care — all of these kinds of things are not taught in schools. In fact they’re rarely conversations in households. So I think people really look to music to find that.
That’s what we’re talking about. If there’s one person that walks out of there feeling better than when they walk in, that’s it.
It’s the fact that we’re all Christians, and we all just love the same music. That is the thing that brings us together, you know, for the greater good.
Four church boys, just raving.
And with that, I ended my recording. I shook hands and left LZ7 to return to their soundcheck and prepare for the night ahead, hoping their music, and the meaning threaded through it, might travel further than the arena walls.