It was not that long ago that Garnier told a story about a man making a wish to a Cloud Making Machine, and in this story, hope became stronger than doubt, love became stronger than fear, the present became stronger than the past, the sun became stronger than the winter and the dance became stronger than anything else. Listen and delve deeper into Laurent’s vision, listen and dance.
Laurent Garnier is the quintessential ‘music aficionado’, a man who has dedicated the most part of his life to contributing so much to electronic music… Whether it be through presenting music via his own productions, his radio shows, written word, making the score for various dance performances or movies and of course DJing; there is no limit to his edification.
When one thinks of Laurent Garnier many emotions, visions and experiences come to mind… A dimly lit warehouse space with hundreds of enchanted music lovers moving to the hypnotic rhythms and mind twisting synths: It’s just them, the DJ and the immense wall of sound that he is emanating. The brooding bassline hit every nerve as the luscious saxophone groove moves the funk in your veins. The DJ: Laurent Garnier. The music: Man with a Red Face. The Time: Australia, year 2000. It has been 7 years since Laurent last visited Australia and his fans have been eagerly awaiting his return. Seven years is quite a long time to be away from any country where you hold a special place in many party people’s memories “Unfortunately we had to cancel two shows within three or four years because I had a few problems and we couldn’t come. But over the years I have started DJing a little bit less, and of course by DJing less there are a lot of countries and fans that are suffering from that. I am really sorry for that and I have always meant to come back to Australia.”
Laurent’s third album “Unreasonable Behaviour” was a retrospective album that took from twelve years of music making; classic tracks that were geared towards the dance floor, and after this album came out… Laurent went from past to present effortlessly, spending time at concerts and continuing to check out various musical styles. If you are an avid Laurent follower you would already be familiar with his nonchalant attitude for sticking to genre boundaries. Obviously there is seven years of more music to choose from since his last visit, but does Laurent still put forth past, present and future sounds? “I think I am much more eclectic now, much much more eclectic… Ten years ago I would play a little bit of drum and bass, a bit of techno and house, I have always been very open minded and played a lot of different styles of music… nowadays, I would have no problem playing rock n roll and a couple of reggae tracks and then come back to techno and stuff like that.”
After a divisive split from Radio Nova in Paris, Laurent set up PBB (www.pedrobroadcast.com) as a radical response to French radio’s conservative approach to music. He retells of the day he threw in the towel at Nova and set up his own radio broadcast. “I was programming the music there (Radio Nova) and one day the director changed the playlist without telling me, he tried to become a little bit commercial and I wouldn’t have it. I went straight to his office and told him to fuck off and from that minute I left.” Laurent’s disillusion with the Parisian station led him to start encoding thousands of tracks on his computer, paying someone to build an internet broadcasting program and starting PBB. He is still enthusiastically running it today. “There is no musical style that I would not play, there is no specific style for PBB, for me it’s what I feel is good music and because I am a very eclectic person I can put on a playlist, a jazz track, a techno track as well as a rock n roll and punk track. There are 100 tracks in the playlist and basically those tracks only play once a day on a 24 hour basis, also alongside the playlist are five or six thousand tracks which are playing once every eight days, so you can forget about hearing the same tracks over and over, it won’t happen on PBB.”
Laurent is not shy when it comes to expressing his viewpoint on world events or the political environment, he very publicly made it be known how angry and upset he was when faced with visa problems when trying to organise a tour to the United States. His productions are emotional and to some extent his older stuff could be said to have an aggressive feel, were there any particular instances where he made music as a direct call and response to a specific issue? “For me Downfall was the vision I had when I was touring in Brazil, when Sarajevo happened… I felt very hurt, because the only way I could hear about the conflict was CNN and I don’t trust CNN because it only talks about the American troupes, and one day they were actually scandalised because they could only talk about a helicopter which went down, which was costing billions of dollars. I thought what about the hundreds of people that were getting killed and raped, can’t you fucking talk about that, cant you be a bit human instead of talking about dirty money… I was so hurt about that.”
He continues to explain how he interprets Downfall, which was made during a lonely time where he was away from family and war was in full effect. “Downfall for me represents a person looking up in the sky and he can see bombs coming down and the bombs basically hit the floor and hit the ground and everything is destroyed. You can hear the track has a break in the middle and then you come back to the track and basically the vision is a guy looking around 360 degrees watching the disaster.”
Laurent will be working on releasing another artist album after he goes back home from Australia, but another release will precede this. “The first thing coming will be a live album, we recorded every single live show I did and we chose 8 or so tracks and we will be releasing a live album in May or June. It’s an experiment on stage; it’s very in between free jazz and electronic. Some of my fans who have followed me for years will understand where I am going with this and I think some of the people who have put a techno tag on me might be disappointed with it; it might be too jazz for them. I am very excited about it.”
When you reflect upon Laurent’s work, there is always a common theme in what he does – he is all about sharing. Sharing his knowledge and passion for music, sharing his experiences, dreams and thoughts through sound and most recently he wrote a book based on his DJ travels and interweaved them into a story that documents a fifteen year timeframe in music. “Basically the book talks about the last 15 years from 1987 up to 2003, of what happened in the electronic music world. So when we travelled to Detroit and when we talked to Madmike or Jeff Mills, we tried to explain the whole story of Detroit, so of course we talked about Barry Gordon (Motown Records founder), we talked about Motown, about church, gospel, hip hop. Then we travelled to England and we talked about the first guys who did the first rave in England and compared it to the 60s when a lot of the kids in Northern England would travel miles to go and dance in warehouse and listen to the Northern Soul DJs. We travelled all around the world and basically we used me as a DJ and traveller and whenever I put my record box in a country, we explained what happened in that country.”
The idea of Electrochoc spawned from a very drunken dinner with friends, whilst laughing at the various stories and anecdotes Laurent’s publisher friend asked him if he ever thought of turning his stories into a book because his memories were so vividly remembered “oh no no its never been my thing to write a book, I’m not a good writer” and without telling him on the Monday that followed she had a meeting with her publishing company and made it all happen. “I wanted to do something important and interesting, I didn’t want to do a social book, I wanted to do a book that talks about techno music and the whole story of techno but lived from the inside, I want to tell kids they can write their own music, make their own labels, I want to explain everything to them, I want to explain the whole story from Detroit and exactly what happened from a personal perspective.”
Unfortunately for us the book has not yet been released in English, during the interview Laurent expresses his disappointment about this but gives us a little hope. “We are actually talking with an Australian company to maybe do it; I would so love to release it in English.” He stops for a long pause and its as if he makes his adamant decision right there and then on the phone “Actually to tell you the truth because we are going to be working on the movie now my wife is going to translate it to English and then once that is done we are going to maybe have it corrected by a journalist in England and I will then have it published myself!”
Electrochoc the movie is currently in script writing stages and is going to be a fictional film. “Basically it will be 10 days in the life of a DJ who is taking a big turn in his career and a lot of the flashbacks will be based on stories from the book”
We ourselves then flashback to Laurent’s last party in Melbourne; a Hardware party held at the infamous Docklands, a night he vividly remembers… he mesmerised the crowd whilst joined by a live saxophonist and played 2 hours overtime. “Oh it was fantastic, I had such a good time…” he is worried about the lengthy time he has been away from Oz and that it might affect people’s attention. “I really hope that there is not too much expectation, when there is too much expectation from people, things don’t work but I hope that we can take it easy and build it and make it nice, I am so excited to come over there” One’s thing for sure, Laurent wont be playing a whole set of techno or minimal “I hope they don’t expect me to play minimal German techno all night (laughs), as much as there is great stuff in there, it can be so boring! All around the world everywhere I go, everyone just wants that.”
Laurent is fondly remembered for the magic that he weaves during his DJ sets, on many occasions people have likened his sets at the End or at Hacienda to “a pagan temple” his infectious smile rises to every pinnacle occasion as he turns to his record box and pulls out another gem to get the dance floor heaving in unison. “a DJs job is to understand the crowd as well as making himself understood by the crowd and try to build something together. To me a party is like a train, the DJ is the front carriage and the second carriage is all the real fans and then you have different carriages that go all the way back. His job is that once he has hooked the second carriage, he has to hook everybody and once he has hooked everyone you can then take them on a journey and make them travel. So before you have felt that you have caught everyone you can’t take too many risks. It’s all about understanding your crowd, your room, the vibe, the mood and taking care of the sound, the lights… everything is together.”
Quite a fitting analogy…. As eccentric as it may sound, it really does make you want to purchase your ticket to secure your spot on this whimsical Laurent Garnier disco train. All aboard.
Tour Dates
Fri 9th March – Melbourne – Hardware 21
Sat 10th March – Sydney – The Cross
Sun 11th March – Sydney – Playground Festival
Laurent Garnier’s Retrospective is out through Creative Vibes.
JAZZPAYBACK says...
sweet.