France’s Laurent Garnier is revered as one of the techno scene’s old faithful, but he’s also one of the few DJs worldwide who’s truly been able to transcend all styles and genres, weaving house, drum n’ bass, soul and whatever else takes his fancy into a sonic landscapes that is all his own. And Mr Garnier has just dropped his new album Tales of a Kleptomaniac, a release that demonstrates better than ever his ability to tell musical tales that stretch the boundaries of electronic music (check out the ITM review).

Laurent Garnier has been enormously outspoken recently on the state of current dance music, particularly the Ed Banger dominated French scene where he has been a leading light for so many years (read more about it here). Here he goes into more detail with ITM about what he thinks is missing from the current dance zeitgeist, as well as giving us an insight into the creation of Tales of a Kleptomaniac.

Hi Laurent, I suppose we’ll start with the album, I had a chance to hear it briefly before the interview and I have got to say I’m very impressed. There’s a very wide ranging sound across the whole thing, as was to be expected, what were you aims what did you want to achieve with this release?

First of all, why this album is so different from the last one The Cloud Making Machine is because I moved house and really, I changed my whole life. When I did The Cloud Making Machine I was living in an industrial area in Paris with motorways and factories, all I could see around me was a very grey Paris. It was pretty hard but that’s how I wanted it, because I’ve always been inspired by Detroit and so wanted to see if I could get into that space. But then, 4 years ago, I moved to a better place with my family with really nice surroundings. It’s in the countryside in the south of France, lovely and sunny with a big garden in a small village and yeah, life is pretty nice. Nice food and nice wine and it was a big change, so I guess this is one main factor that made my music a bit more happy and lively.

By moving I met a lot of new musicians where I lived. I’ve worked with them all at various stages and they all came on stage with me a few years ago and we recorded a lot of live stuff. We then released that as an album and from that I wanted to transform this kind of essay into a full album. I wanted to explore all these movements, techno is a music of freedom and it’s always been a mixture of different types of music. I felt liberated with this concept and liberated with all these musicians – they were happy to go in these new directions because they are all jazz based, which brings with it, a lot of freedom. Really I felt like it was about bloody time I did something like this since I’m a fairly eclectic DJ. And so yeah, this is the result, I think it defines exactly who I am as a DJ

I think anyone listening would appreciate your work, but one thing I’d like to hear more about is your thoughts on some of the bigger French producers and your sort of dissatisfaction with how the scene has evolved into a more image based thing and perhaps the music is coming second and quite disposable.

You’ve got to understand how much things have changed in the last 20 years in techno. Before it was all about music – the first thing which was important and the only thing which was important was the music. I put out music and if you like it then I’m happy and if not then shit, I’ll do better but it was always about the music… Everybody used the term faceless techno, nobody wanted to be seen, no one wanted their faces bandied around anyway. Everyone had different aliases and you never knew who was who and that was what it was about, just putting out the music and letting it speak for itself. Judge me for my music, not my face and this is the big fight with Underground Resistance.

The reason they always used the masks is because they wanted to be represented by the quality of their music. They said if you like our music then great but a pretty face won’t make it any better. Now it’s all about rock and roll and being cool and looking cool, but a lot of the music is pretty empty and works on energy and very little else. That’s fine, it’s good to have that music at one point of the night but, for me, a night as a DJ has so much more than just trying to get the crowd crazy, you need to tell a story, you need to engage on more levels, you need to try different directions, surprise the crowd. It’s a much more complex thing than just creating energy and getting them going mental. It’s nice to have them mental for a time, but there’s so much more to music. It’s true that a lot of the new generation are all about who you are and being cool, and I find it a bit empty quite frankly.

Let me throw this theory at you. I believe that, as an artist, of any persuasion, you need to connect with your soul to output your best work.

I agree, but I think producing music is a constant search. You always search to do something different. Whatever stuff you put out unless you’re doing it for the moment or the fun! I’ll tell you a story about Derrick May, who was my absolute king and idol, he was one of the first producers in techno where I really felt touched by this guy and for a lot of years I couldn’t take off the idea of Derrick’s music out of mine – which is a bit sad in one way cause of this focus, it sort of closed me down in one way. But anyway, Derrick and Mike Banks, they were my Gods. The first time I gave a record to Derrick I told him, “This is a track I did with a friend, we just played around and did it for fun”. He looked at me shocked and said “What? You did it for fun?” I said, “Yeah, sort of, we went in to the studio and fucked around a bit and came up with this”. He said never ever make a record for fun cause no matter how funny you think you are now in 20 or 30 years time this record will still be around and people will still judge you from it.

If people haven’t heard this, and hear it in 20 years time and if your career goes well, then people will judge you from this and you need to be stronger about what you do and believe 100 per cent. When he said that it shocked me, in a good way, it was a wake up call. If you release a record it’s like a book, somehow it will be around forever. It’s true that if you make music you’re making a statement about who you are, and your music reflects you and your soul so you have to try and be as honest as you can. But to predict what’s going to happen tomorrow, well that’s a different thing.

Do you think, over the coming years, we’ll maybe a return to more ‘real’ music?

There are amazing records out at the moment, so let’s not be all doom and gloom. There’s almost too much, the biggest problem beyond the commercial thing is that there’s almost too much music. As a DJ I’ve always received a lot of new music and whereas I used to get about 100 records a week, and now I get about 1000. I have been away for 2 days and I have 280 tracks to download in two days! The thing is that out of this a lot are good quality, a lot are way above average but then within that maybe 20 per cent are really good, and the hardest thing is to pick that 20 per cent. It’s very hard for people to find themselves and find their sound in all of this.

I think the commercial sound is becoming harder and sounding more underground than what it was. It’s got a little bit more edge than what it had. It sounds a lot more underground and edgy, not good necessarily but some of it isn’t as far away from what we play as what it was 10 years ago… To say what the future will bring is hard, I couldn’t have predicted this current big sound so I really can’t say, only hope!

Laurent Garnier’s Tales of a Kleptomaniac is out now in Australia through Liberator Music.