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[F Communications / Creative Vibes]
Stop now! This is a DVD, not a CD!
Okay – I’m assuming that you’ve read the above, and want to look at the pictures as well as hear the music. This is the first music DVD I’ve seen – I’m passionate about my music, but have generally preferred to either dance in a club to live music or DJs, or else listen to high-quality recordings on my hi-fi at home. This DVD is a recording of a live Laurent Garnier concert from Elysee Montmartre in Paris, taken from his world tour in September 2000 to publicise his then-new album, Unreasonable Behaviour.
I plugged it into my computer, turned the lights down and locked the door as instructed by the amusing intro, and let rip. The venue looked amazing – maybe 2000 Parisian clubbers ramming the huge dance-floor, and it was clear the tour hadn’t stinted on the production budget. Dancers pirouetted onstage, lasers swept the crowd, sun-guns exploded in clouds of smoke – the atmosphere was great. Garnier took the stage, accompanied by a keyboardist and a sax-player, and they were off. Immediately the limitations of the format became apparent. I’m used to really high-quality sound from my hi-fi, and although I’ve spent money on a decent semi-surround system and sound-card for my computer, the sound quality just doesn’t come close. I found the video component interesting at first, but it soon palled – I’m a techno-geek, but even I can only take so much knob-twiddling. Despite good editing, amazing atmosphere in the club and great music, I found the visual aspect of the DVD very boring and would have preferred to concentrate on the music by cranking it up through my stereo – or best of all, to have been there in person.
The music itself was great. If you know the album Unreasonable Behaviour, it’s all here, plus a trio of music videos for good measure. Garnier covers the spectrum from techno to house, with a distinctively French twist. He opens with the beautiful, wistful Last Tribute from the 20th Century and worked the crowd and the tempo up from there. Communications from the Lab is dark and moody, and I thought he was going to lose the crowd at that point, but the classic Acid Eiffel had them all back on their dancing feet. Garnier is an accomplished musician and arranger, and his use of jazz in techno tracks is masterful. Phillipe Nabot plays alto & tenor sax as well as the more esoteric Yamaha WX7 MIDI wind controller, all to fantastic effect – notably on Garnier’s biggest hit and one of my favourite tracks of all time, The Man with the Red Face. I was less impressed with his keyboardist, who tended to go off on plangent, discordant excursions, much to my irritation. Garnier wound the crowd up to a frenzy with his techno stomper Crispy Bacon before closing off this 52-minute video with Madness. His energy levels were incredible for a man who had spent most of the year on tour, and clearly was in his element, laughing, smiling, and having a ball behind his bank of machines – a very easy musician to like.
But despite Garnier’s great smile and obvious rapport with the crowd, and the regular glimpses of gorgeous mademoiselles shaking their collective booty, the club atmosphere was missing something on the DVD, and the sound was ultimately disappointing. If you have spent a great deal of money on a dedicated big-screen TV and a good surround-sound system you’ll get a lot more out of it than I did, but frankly I’d spend the money on a better sound system for listening in stereo.
