Several years ago, when speaking to Ed Banger records honcho Busy P, I asked the frenchman who he thought was the greatest French DJ of all time. “Laurent Garnier,” he answered without the slightest hesitation. Of course, there could be no other answer. With over 20 years of experience both behind the decks and performing live, Garnier has moved multiple generations of techno fans with his exceptionally long DJ sets and classic tracks such as “Crispy Bacon,” “Acid Eiffel” and “The Man With The Red Face.” And he’s spent the past decade performing his own music live with accomplished jazz musicians, proving himself to be a stellar festival act as well as nightclub staple.
In 2010, Garnier entered his next phase as a performer with L.B.S. (Live Booth Sessions), a combination of his live and DJ abilities, the shows find Garnier moving seemlessly between time at the decks, and time spent performing his own tracks live with Scan X and Benjamin Rippert. The first few months of L.B.S. dates have taken the trio across Europ and Asia, now they are coming to the U.S. with dates scheduled in Montreal (3/24), New York (3/26) and most surprisingly, at Ultra Music Festival (3/25).
Laurent speaks (as his publicist put it) “for all of France.” He is an endlessly interesting interview, so we left the who thing intact as he talks about L.B.S., his friendship with Busy P, druggy German nightclubs, the hardships of touring America and how many Jeff Mills records it too many Jeff Mills records.
Enjoy.
I just saw you do LBS Berlin at Panorama Bar in Berlin. Seemed like a small venue for you.
I did a couple of times downstairs in the big room. About six years ago they asked me to go upstairs and try Panorama Bar. I loved it so much I said this is it. This is where I want to play. Usually I do very long sets, 10 or 12 hours, because it’s a place that stays open forever. They allow DJs to play really long sets. When we started thinking about LBS, I thought Panorama Bar was the perfect place to do it in Berlin. Not too big, really good atmosphere. We could take the people on the journey.
I thought it was a very spiritual night. We actually recorded that night. Over the Xmas period, we gave away on Facebook “Gnanmankoudji”recorded that night.
That night you played very dramatic, or epic. Those tracks that would be cheesy if anyone else played them, but you pull it off. Not the standard sound for a Panorama Bar, the cool techno crowd.
I don’t follow the cool techno crowd. I just play music I feel good about. I’m trying to stay away from the cheesiness, but it’s true I’ve always had my heart in Detroit techno and stuff like that. I don’t know how you can describe the tracks, but if it sounds good I’m happy with that.
It’s not cheesy, it’s just more emotional.
That’s what I like playing. I’ve always been someone who likes music. I know in Germany there’s a very strict format, and if you don’t play that you can be judged. I’m just trying to hear good music and play something I feel good with. I just try to be honest. Especially there, I allow myself to play more vocal tracks that I don’t usually get to play because I’m usually in the techno clubs. I can’t play that many house or vocal records, but at Panaorama Bar I know they can take it.
Do you consider what you might play depending on the room?
I never question what I should or should not play. I always have a lot of music in my box. As a DJ, my job is to understand the crowd and suss the place. The time is very important. The mood, the moment, the light, the sound is all very important. My job as a DJ is to catch the crowd, have a relationship with the crowd. I don’t think about things like that before I get to a gig because you can go to a place on a different night of the week and the mood is going to be completely different. My job is to play with whoever is there that night and try to transform it. Go as far as a I can with whatever I have there.
I saw your son is with you. How old is he?
He is seven.
Are you starting to teach him about music?
I was away in Asia for two week, and when I came back, my son and his best friend told me they want to be DJs. I said, “OK, we have to talk about this. It’s not just about playing cool records and getting the chicks. There’s a more spiritual thing to it.”
He likes music, but more like a seven year old. He likes some of the pop stuff, but I guess he has a very open mind. He’s forging himself.
Being a DJ is daddy’s job so it might not be the coolest thing for him. He wants to be a karate guy.
Do you feed his interest?
Funny enough, I keep telling him, I have like 55,000 vinyl records at home. I keep telling him, “all this will be yours one day.” Who else is gonna want this stuff. And he says “What the hell am I gonna do with all this? I’ll need a million boxes to carry it. Who ever helps you move hates you.” He finds it pretty funny.
There’s records everywhere and he can listen to whatever he wants. We listen to a lot of music at home, but I’m not trying to feed him anything. He listens to a lot of video clips and makes his own choice. I think the day will come when he’s going to want to start digging. I think he’s a bit young right now. Especially for the stuff I listen to at home. I listen to a lot of funk, soul, jazz, blues and rock n roll. A lot of things that aren’t electronic. He’s influenced by TV, which is more pop, which isn’t’ what we listen to at home.
At what point did that happen, that the home listening stopped being the stuff you listen to when you play out?
It comes with age. I think we all have phases in life. When I was very young, 12-13, I had my punk phase. Then I had my disco phase. Then funk was everything. And then I moved to England, so I was going to a lot of new wave clubs, and listening to a lot of cold wave/new wave music. Then electro music was coming from Miami and fresh hip-hop stuff that was more upbeat. I found that really exciting. Then go-go music arrived. I think in ten years I swallowed a lot of styles of music.
Then house and techno arrived, and I got completely sucked in. Electro, house, techno was a condensing of everything I was listening to. It had funk, it had hip-hop, it had synthetic rock. I got into Detroit house and techno very deeply, and that was something I listened to for ten years.
After I digested all this, that’s when I started making music, and I decided to form a band and go onstage. I met some jazz musicians. And with jazz, either you grow up with it and you’re into it at a young age, or you get into it much later. I got into jazz around when I was 30. Working with jazz musicians, I discovered jazz. There was a big phase where I needed to prove to myself that I could go onstage with a jazz band and make music with those boys and become some sort of musician myself. I had this complex of the non-musician. People say, “you’re not a musician, you’re using drum machines, you’re using this and that.” I had to prove to myself, and maybe other people, that I could direct a band, and perform live.
Once this phase was done, about five years ago, is when I started to become much more free in regards to what I was listening to and how I was performing. That’s when I got into blues and I moved on. Now I guess the music that influences me the most, that I’m performing now, is either African music or psychedelic music. There’s a connection—both have very long tracks, and if you listen to to Fela for example, all the tracks are 20 minutes long and have this trance thing, it’s very addictive. It takes you on a real journey. I listen to a lot of Doors, I’m in my Doors phase at the moment. It’s weird. Why now, and not 15 years ago? I used to love The Doors, but not as much as I do now. I guess I just saw the movie that just came out, it’s brilliant. It makes you want to be there.
[...] check Laurent’s interview with Urb.com. Share This:TweetFacebookStumbleUponDiggDelicious Written on 27.03.2011 by suzana in Laurent [...]