Laurent Garnier - Tech-House for Alien Nights

The bastard face of house. The exquisite touch of a perfectionist. Parisian catastrophes for nights of another era. Musician, producer and composer. Alien and earthbound. Delicate and vicious. If the battle for the spread of (new) electronic sounds between France and England was won by the former, we owe it precisely to Laurent Garnier. His is dancing, swaying music, seemingly composed for moments of madness, fleeting instances of instability. Fragments of interplanetary beauty.

Born in 1966 in Boulogne-sur-Seine, in the darkest corner of France, Garnier began weaving sounds together from early adolescence. In the '80s he was a DJ, first in London, then in Manchester, but it's in the following decade that he manages to evolve both as a musician-producer and as a creature of the console. As time passes, he makes a name for himself among those who matter, eventually becoming one of the most important disc jockeys in the world. It was precisely his outgoing DJing activity in Manchester (at the legendary Haçienda) in the late '80s that would clearly influence groups like Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in the way they blended rock rhythms with dance cadences. 

Back in Paris, where he played everywhere, even five nights a week, he was put in charge of the dance section at the French Fnac, where his first works were released, alongside those of Ludovic Navarre, DJ Deep, and Shazz. In 1993 he released the EP A Bout de Souffle: interstellar embroidery too close to earth to be considered truly significant, but worth hearing to understand the evolution of his own sound.

The venture, run together with his partner Eric Morand from 1992 to 1994, led the duo to create a new label, F Communications. French-Touch is now active. From the outset, the label stood out for its tremendous work in bringing the French sound to clubs around the world, well before the neo-disco wave of projects like Daft Punk and Cassius.

A recording career among the greats of electronic music. Overflowing perfection. A dazzling blend of deep house, Detroit techno, insidious acid/trance influences and a surprising jazzy streak. These are landscapes for wandering souls, inhuman beats and ice-cold blood. Machines in the service of dance. Music to move to under the moon and let yourself go until exhaustion. Tribal rites on a scorching, suffocating summer night, with nothing but the beat stirring a stagnant stillness.

His first real full-length test, and we're already out in space. The year is 1995. Even though Shot In The Dark is his debut work, the assurance with which he nails the right groove is impressive. Techno collisions wrapped in obsessive bleeps ("Shot In The Dark"), a burst of abrasive, skin-scraping noise ("Geometric World"), a tribute to the legendary Parisian club "Rex" with a vaguely house-leaning groove ("Rex Attitude"). It's a masterly debut that debunks the myth that Garnier is merely a great DJ and not a quality producer. Chapeau.

That same year, his catalogue gained a transitional work: Mixmag Live!, Vol. 19. Meanwhile, he had fun remixing half the history of electronic music and put out Laboratoire Mix (1996). Green Velvet, Neil Landstrumm, Juan Atkins, Aux88, K Hand: these are just a few of the artists reshaped by Laurent's deft hand. An essential piece of his discography and one of the finest essays on the philosophy of mixing ever released.

That same year the label Never released a best-of, Raw Works, which includes his early classics, from "Butterfly" to "Rex Attitude" by way of "Orgasm", all the way to the cataclysm of "Aquarius".

In 1997 Laurent released 30, an album shaped by the wave of new trends that had taken hold within the electronic scene. Trip-hop forays, hazy dub, excellent emulations, risky sketches. A bold work, admirable in its "intentions", but at the same time contradictory and marked by frequent ups and downs. Overall, the result misses the mark.

A disappointment that takes concrete shape in its dullest moments ("Deep Sea Diving", "For Max"); there's never a shortage of club-ready hits ("The Hoe", "Flashback"), a handful of shaky, uncertain compositions ("Sweet Mellow D", "Mid Summer Night"), and a desire to experiment that doesn't fully pay off ("Kall It!", "I Funk Up"). A transitional record, but a crucial one for the artist's development, as he tries out various approaches and draws his own conclusions from them. Aware of both his strengths and his limits, he would go on to pursue a more coherent path, immersing himself in a world of alien imagery.

In 1998 two works came out: first of all, his live DJ performances captured on X-Mix-2: Destination Planet Dream (on !K7). It's a grueling 70-minute session, a selection featuring A.S.I.O., Robert Armani, Dea, H.M.C., Karl Kowalski, Kenny Larkin, Guillaume La Tortue, and Brian Transeau. Having achieved complete mastery of the art of mixing, Garnier twists a host of sacred cows beyond recognition, in a cosmic whirlwind spanning techno, house, acid and trance. Worth singling out in particular is the Carl Craig remix: a lesson in how to split a track's nature in two and make it even more suffocating.

That same year, Arcade released an anthology of the precious early works Garnier composed in his late teens, Early Works, in which the hallmarks of his later output are already evident. "Acid Eiffel" gives off poisonous, hauntingly dangerous spores and stands as a Parisian tribute to the mecca of techno: Detroit. "Wake Up" is a full-on jumble of techno stomp, a classic of the early '90s, the magical era of European raves. A sinuous, hypnotic trance runs through tracks like "Lost In Alaska" and "Virtual Breakdown". Flourishes of colourful house flexibility embellish the brooding "Moonbeam". Then there are the searing, stellar beats of "Breathless". In 1999 the same compilation would be reissued on a single CD, with additional tracks, among them the sublime "Join Hands".

Then came 2000. A new millennium. And with it, Garnier's absolute masterpiece. His mature statement. Stylistic versatility beyond any genre boundary. Unreasonable Behaviour isn't an album: it's a miracle. It's the soundtrack to twenty-first-century nights. Packed clubs. Countless wandering heads. Dancing and listening. An orgiastic movement of bodies. A corrosive beat for aliens.

The apocalypse arrives with full force ("The Sound Of Big Babou", "Greed", "Dangerous Drive"); dark, cursed atmospheres, lightly jazzy and fragmentary, are unprecedented yet warmly received ("The Man With Red Face", "Cycles d'Oppositions", "Last Tribute From The 20th Century"). The record marks a decisive evolution in Garnier's style. Drawing on the lessons of the Detroit sound, he conjures up one of the most innovative sonic blends in recent electronic music, one that would go down as one of the most important records in the history of the international electronic scene.

Three years would pass before his recording output picked up pace again, when Excess Luggage came out in 2004. A monumental collection of remixes and collaborations spread across four CDs, it meticulously sums up every little quirk of his approach to music. A common thread runs through what seems like a chaotic jumble of dance-pop, techno, house, trance and anything else you can think of. There's a risk of losing yourself a little within this work, but with the right amount of patience, you'll still manage to fully appreciate all its nuances.

In 2005 two works came out: another remix collection and, more importantly, a new studio album. Life: Styles gathers recent hits remixed by Garnier with the by-now-trademark skill that defines him. From the dance-pop vignette of John Carpenter's "The End" to the mesmerizing "I Get Lifted" by George McRae.

In 2005, The Cloud Making Machine is a record of ups and downs, caught between tracks of untouchable class and surprising letdowns. "The Cloud Making Machine Part 1" is a raw, mysterious proto-ambient piece, exuding noise and mysticism: disfigured voices seem to moan, unrecognizable keyboards trace sinuous patterns in the air. "9.01-9.06" sounds like IDM reshaped into house, with what feel like dub murmurs, interrupted by double-bass samples with a jazz flavour. Multifaceted. While "Barbiturik Blues" suggests an alien music, best suited to solitary settings, "Huis Cois" has nothing to offer, with truly sloppy, banal piano/guitar parts and equally forgettable vocals. "Act. 1 Minotaure Ex." is a very well-built, inspired suite, moving between synthetic organs, sampled string instruments and fragmented passages that smack of experimentation. "First Reaction (V2)" is a kind of abstract hip-hop, with an ambient feel and a driving beat: tiny keyboard lines leave behind small, fussy notes, while a sonic carpet evokes space and stars. The voice is very powerful, reeling off rhymes and pained words. The whole thing is pure accomplishment. "Controlling The House Part 2" is very subdued and withdrawn. The rhythm never really takes off, and the surrounding elements don't help (re)create an infectious atmosphere. Understated. "(I Wanna Be) Waiting for My Plane" is a raw, driving electro-clash cut. A rock-concert track for techno lovers.

Summing things up so far, the record might seem to lack any real "masterpieces". Well, think again. Here comes "Jeux D'Enfants". Children's voices are overwhelmed and distorted by a sea of disjointed beats, in a random, chaotic percussive maelstrom. Once again, a stretched-out organ seems to trace the track's dark alleyways, the sound shrinking and expanding, proliferating and exploding. The ending brings peace, after a collision of millions of pinballs against the walls of our mind. A child sings us a nursery rhyme. Closing things out is "The Cloud Making Machine Part 2", continuing the thread begun by the opening track, with the addition of a sharp, grinding violin. The journey ends, and house music's bastard face retreats into hiding. The perfectionist of electronic music reaches the end of 2005 with one certainty: that he is now one of the key figures on the international scene.

In 2006, two more compilations of differing merit were released, the first of which is titled Kings Of Techno. Label Rapster, having already enlisted major names for its "The Kings Of..." series (from DJ Premier for Hip-Hop to Masters At Work for House), set about compiling a Techno chapter, putting two figures who made its history behind the decks: American Carl Craig and, indeed, Laurent Garnier. The first part is entrusted to the Frenchman, who stays true to the definition "techno is George Clinton and Kraftwerk locked in an elevator" and takes the long way round, starting from "No Fun" by the Stooges, before probing black music territory via Aretha Franklin ("Rock Steady") and the Temptations ("Plastic Man"), closing precisely with Clinton's Funkadelic and their "Bettinos Bounce". Skipping a decade ahead, we're suddenly plunged into a second-wave Detroit binge with Jeff Mills ("Utopia"), Arpanet ("NTT Docomo"), D.I.E ("Get Up") and BFC, Carl Craig's alias, ("Galaxy"). A surprise conclusion comes with Hip-Hop's new white prodigy Dabrye, who closes out the selection with his "Game Over". The "encyclopedic" intent is interesting, but the compilation offers some tracks that did influence techno yet have little to do with its actual history, while the other half features interesting songs that ignore the genre's true birth period, coinciding with the second half of the Eighties. Episodes with no cohesion and no logic, presenting techno in a partial, one-sided way.

The second part sees Carl Craig acting as selector, with tracks that take us back to the Eighties, such as Visage's "Frequency 7" and Kano's splendid "It's A War", before touring Europe alongside Yello ("No More Words"), Art Of Noise ("Beat Box Diversion 1"), Nitzer Ebb ("Join The Chant") and our own Alexander Robotnick ("Dance Boy Dance"), wrapping up with the tail end of Choice's "Acid Eiffel". Craig focuses on the European continent, offering a series of undeniably important tracks that, in a compilation with these premises, end up feeling superficial and muddled, with no apparent logic other than surprising listeners with an unusual selection.

The second compilation released in 2006, and undoubtedly the best of those described here, is Retrospective, partly thanks to its wide scope, digging up the best tracks from an uneven album like "30", among which the obsessive "Crispy Bacon" and the remixed "Flashback" deserve a mention, not to mention the moving "For Max". As for the masterpiece "Unreasonable Behaviour", we get, sometimes in their original form, sometimes mixed, the terrifying "The Man With The Red Face" (recorded live) and the alien "Downfall". Moving on to the Martian jazz of "Greed", with the painful omission of "The Sound Of The Big Babou" being this compilation's only flaw. There's a slim inclusion from the last studio album, "The Cloud Making Machine", featuring whatever was worth salvaging from an otherwise disappointing effort. The deconstructions of "Jeaux d'Enfants" are top-class work, while the odd "Barbiturik Blues" gets by as best it can between booming beats and digital hisses. As for the "gems", worth mentioning is the hushed "10000 Leagues", originally released under the name Alex Attias Presents Mustang, which Garnier mixed. A major find is the explosive "Demented", written by Carl Craig, which Garnier again had a hand in, precisely in 2003.

Among the very first tracks included we find "Coloured City", released in '98, "At Night", put out in 2003 under the moniker Alaska (with Nic Britton), and "Basic", a remix for Elegia that also dates back to his early days, around 1999.

On the second CD, the collection still manages to turn up a few surprises, offering two nods to his debut album, "Shot In The Dark", via "Astral Dreams" and "Raw Cut" — a reminder that, despite his inexperience, Garnier was capable of great things even in his early days. It closes with the deceptively gentle, almost angelic "Le Voyage De Simone", and all that's left for us to say is how essential a "document" of this scope is for anyone wanting even a first glimpse into the figure of Laurent Garnier.

Having moved past the period when techno music in France was fiercely opposed by public opinion and clamped down on by the authorities, Laurent Garnier became an institutionalized figure, helping make the phenomenon understandable to a wider audience. Part of a scene identified as "French Touch", of which the extraordinary success of Daft Punk was merely the tip of the iceberg, Garnier has performed all over the world, from the biggest, most crowded festivals (Sonar in Barcelona, Atonal in Berlin) to the most exclusive venues (such as Paris's Salle Pleyel, where he would headline in 2010), achieving notable success even in the Far East (in Japan he regularly headlines acclaimed DJ sets).

In 2007 he released a live album, Public Outburst, a synthesis of sonic experiments carried out together with other musicians, Benjamin Rippert, Bugge Wesseltoft and Philippe Nadaud, aiming for a bold yet thoroughly successful fusion of techno and jazz.

Among the works released during the 2010s, one must certainly mention La Home Box, an album released in 2015, along with its follow-up appendix La Home Box Remixes, which came shortly after.

Two years later, in 2017, Garnier received the Légion d'Honneur, the highest honor bestowed by the French state, presented to him by former Minister of Culture Jack Lang.

Ironically, right as nightclubs remained shut by government decree because of the pandemic, Laurent Garnier remained constantly in the spotlight. In 2021 he was honored with the biographical documentary Off The Record, a sort of mini world tour that for the first time explores and documents both his private life and his artistic one. Directed by filmmaker Gabin Rivoire and premiered in Italy as part of the "Let The Music Play" section of the 62nd Festival dei Popoli in Florence, Off The Record hit cinemas on January 10, 2022.

Besides Garnier's own first-person account, the film draws on valuable and fascinating contributions from numerous other decks stars, such as Carl Cox, Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin, who take part in recounting the growth of club culture over recent decades.

Also in 2021 came the release of De Pelìcula, a new chapter in his discography, the fruit of a renewed collaboration with French garage-psych duo Limiñanas. Across the eleven tracks of De Pelìcula, Garnier's propulsive electronics merge extremely effectively with the psychedelic groove conceived by Lionel and Marie Limiñana: a sound perfect for clubs (just listen to "Steeplechase"...) but one that at the same time doesn't forget to bring drums and electric guitars to the fore (watch out for the second part of "Juliette", with its narcotic quality reminiscent of Massive Attack in their "Mezzanine" era), drawing often on the circular repetitions typical of kraut architectures.

Among the standout moments, those where the different influences blend together with particular success, at least "Je rentrais par le boise...BB" and "Promenade oblique" deserve a mention. The fact that this is a concept album built around an on the road adventure lends the project even greater depth. De Pelìcula is in fact the soundtrack to an imaginary film, a road movie starring the characters Juliette and Saul. The story is narrated through Lionel's voice, with a couple of interventions from Marie. There are two guests: on the single "Que calor!" the Spanish-language lyrics are handled by Edi Pistolas of Pànico, while French singer-songwriter Bertrand Belin takes center stage on "Au début c'était le début".

After an eight-year absence from releasing an album under his own name alone, in 2023 Garnier returned with 33 Tours et puis s'en vont: 17 tracks for a total of two hours and forty minutes of music designed purely for the dancefloor. A liberating project, equally effective on the most crowded floors and for private listening on headphones, through which Garnier confirms himself not only as an enlightened producer but as a stunning and thoroughly modern composer, one of the few of his generation still decisive in shaping a sound that isn't cloyingly nostalgic but able to slot naturally into the present day. 33 Tours et puis s'en vont is a tribute to the styles its author has crossed paths with over the course of his legendary career, and the opening tracks on the record immediately affirm a celebration of that techno music which no one but Garnier has managed to render so melodically: a trademark that has become instantly recognizable over the years, turning him into a monument of contemporary electronic music.

A techno-house triumph, as we said, but within 33 Tours Garnier's omnivorous attitude isn't slow to surface, expressed through his urge to bring in "other" genres. Hip hop comes blaring in (and that's no exaggeration) on "In Your Phase", where French rapper 22Carbone's energetic flow lends the track an urban edge. A little further on, the voice of the late Alan Vega of Suicide takes center stage on "Saturn Drive Triplex", a track that pushes toward rock-wave territory, complete with crashing guitars. References to kraut are everywhere, in the many structures built on repetition, and the record closes with a couple of relaxing deep moments. Garnier has announced that starting in 2025 he will scale back his live activity, rationing his hugely followed DJ sets and avoiding the weekends spent shuttling between Ibiza, Berlin and Miami, but what he leaves us with in 33 Tours, among his finest works ever, is far from an artistic last testament — if anything, it feels like a launchpad into the next chapter of a decades-long trajectory.

Rounding off a project that was already encyclopedic in its own right, in September Garnier released 33 T.E.P.S.V. Remixes, a collection of remixes commissioned from expert friends and emerging young colleagues, DJs and producers of varying renown who lent a hand in reworking some of the tracks from the album, aiming to recast them with their own personal touch, and in doing so further amplifying the stylistic diversity already present in the original material.

The more melodic side of techno remains a defining trait, often tinged with wave undertones, as in the work done by Works Of Intent on “Reviens la nuit”, or drawing on themes reminiscent of Seventies film scores (as in “Tales From The Real World”, handed over to Voltaire). Veteran Rocco Rodamaal steps in with two reworkings of “Liebe Grusse Aus Cucuron”, while two slots also go to New York's Avision (who gets his hands on “Le Swing de Pouleto” as well as another version of “Liebe Grusse Aus Cucuron”) and to psychedelic pals Liminanas, who contribute two versions of “Saturn Drive Triplex”. Militant hip hop, on the other hand, is what French rapper Carbon22 makes even more unsettling in his remix of “In Your Phase”.

Two years on, the French turntable guru develops another monumental project: Fabric Presents Laurent Garnier. The DJ/producer is tasked by a true London institution, the legendary Fabric, with putting together a selection to celebrate the club's 25th anniversary. It's the best possible choice: Garnier is known as a voracious consumer of records, particularly new releases, a compulsive digger constantly on the hunt for material to slot into his DJ sets. To take on the job, he ended up with so many tracks at his disposal that he decided to put together four separate themed mixes, one for each CD making up a hefty boxset: downtempo, UK bass, techno, house - a kind of snapshot of the state of the art of part of the international electronic scene, an engrossing journey free of any territorial boundaries and rich with the most disparate contaminations, for a total of nearly six hours of music. At the end of each CD sits an original track made for the occasion by Garnier, forming a kind of cross-cutting EP, an unreleased chapter in his own discography.

Listening through nearly six hours of music, it feels as if you're right beside him, as he listens with meticulous care to the material, feeding his proverbial hunger for novelty, digging in the most unexpected places, forever searching for sounds still capable of surprising him, with the not-insignificant goal of spreading the word about the best finds. The four CDs were released on streaming platforms two months apart from one another over the first half of 2025, in an order deliberately reversed from the one that would describe an evening spent in a club, where heading home ought to mark the final chapter of the story. Garnier leaves listeners free to arrange them however they prefer, choosing which one to dive into depending on the moment. A box set handy for soundtracking a house party, and at the same time an interesting compass for industry insiders, who can draw inspiration for their own DJ sets by listening to the results of Garnier's careful research. Even in an age when excellent mixtapes can be found just about everywhere, such meticulously curated round-up selections are more than welcome...

Contributions by Michele Camerin (“Kings Of Techno”)

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