Interview with Laurent Garnier by Ollie Brooke

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 reallynice 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

It reminds me of “Unreasonable Behavior” a fair bit actually, in it’s range and overall style…

In a way I agree, you’re the first person to say that but yeah. Unreasonable Behavior had a lot of hints of what you get with this album, I totally agree with you there…

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 cos they wanted to 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.

That area of the scene is definitely not musically healthy and I know a lot of people involved at that end don’t find it overly fulfilling but at some point things have changed from being a purely merit based underground culture…

The funny thing is I was talking to one of the guys who releases on Ed Banger and he was saying that people get bored with their stuff and that they need to change soon and I said that now we’ll see who’s real and who’s not.
The hardest thing now for these people will be now as people get bored and think OK, fine, we had fun, what next? I think the next 2 years is going to be dangerous and very important for them and very exciting for the rest of us.
I know a lot will fall and a lot will lose but some will come through.

I know a lot of the people who are driving this more commercial end are actually seasoned producers who’ve cashed in , do you think they’ll lead the return to a more underground state?

I’m not sure, you have to understand the frustration from some of these people. Many of them have been fighting for a style of music they believe in and truly like and never really made it with that, never made money or never lived off it.
That’s OK when you’re 20 but life is different when you’re 20, you can basically fuck the world but when you turn to 30 or 35 and you realise you can’t screw the world some people are bound to drop their arms and go for fuck sake - I’ve been trying to do what I believe in and no good so now I’m old enough to maybe go into a different direction and make money from it which I can understand but I’m not doing.
I’m not ready, I live quite nicely already but I’ve always been fighting for what I believe and what we should defend is quality music.
I have nothing against these people some are good friends of mine and, while it’s not my music, at the end of the day they do their thing. As I was saying before, now is the interesting time to see who is doing it from the heart and who will go away.
I also see these people who were defending the underground and while I can understand why people feel like they want a piece of the cake, on the other hand I think maybe they weren’t in it for the right reasons to start with.

I think the parallels are that the DJ thing is about image to many and I think that a lot of budding DJs see production as a shortcut to becoming a famous DJ. They rush into the whole thing without maturing properly or realising how deep this shit goes…

Look at the amount of DJs that can’t even dance, how do you make someone dance, how do you give it if you can’t catch the funk. So many DJs just play 1 after another regardless of the bigger picture or the fact that they don’t “get it”.
The key is to play the right track at the right moment, searching the crowd for the right time to peak, surprise, you need to search of the right time to play that record so the dancers go home and think about what you did and how you did it – they’re wowed – that’s the key, not blasting them with energy weapons into submission!

So many young DJs now you could take any of their sets and put the 100 songs they played in a bag and shake it up they’d all sound the same and it’s blank and it’s boring frankly...
So many kids play now cos it’s easy, fun and cool but the music is boring as hell..

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 cos 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 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 cos 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%.
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,some how 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 is 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, now I get about 1000, I have been away for 2 days and I have 280 tracks to download in 2 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% are really good and the hardest thing is to pick that 20%.
It’s very hard for people to find themselves and find their sound in all of this. The thing with so much music is it’s hard to know where to start. I don’t listen to everything and I spend every single day listening to hundreds of records. It’s very tough now to find the cream of the crop now.
Technology makes shit music sound great, so it’s getting to the point where even the cheesy commercial rubbish sounds good and because of the intention being there it makes them OK and cool but then you need to find the extra thing. That’s the hard bit, filtering out the great from the OK.
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. I’d rather listen to good underground music in big clubs, it’d be great to hear it in commercial clubs but in a way commercial music got better, I still don’t listen to it but it has got better.

So I guess the better it gets the easier it is to meld the 2 together and maybe enable a return to source?

Maybe, maybe it will, time will tell…

Laurent Garnier Interview Feedback... by Ollie Brooke (28 replies) Share On Facebook Page -1- Jump To Bottom | Back to Topics...
Ollie Brooke	Any comments or feedback in here please. I thought he had some interesting things to say, a few tangents explored but overall I found it quite an illuminating experience!
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kibbles 1 year ago	Good stuff dude.. Hows about a tommy trash interview next?
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DJmysttik 1 year ago	good one I enjoyed reading his responses to many relevant questions and topics given in today's scene...
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JustDima 1 year ago	Interesting insight...
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PLD 1 year ago	Great. Next Dennis Ferrer..
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Ollie Brooke 1 year ago	I've tried to secure an interview with Ferrer before, perhaps it's time to try again!
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DJ Bones 1 year ago	A good and interestig read. Nice one
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Mike Jules 1 year ago	nicely done he seems like a decent dude, interesting derrick may anecdote as well.
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betaone 1 year ago	Ollie.. I enjoyed reading this very much. Times and technology change... nightclubs and music formats change too.... but writing from the heart has always been paramount; an essential part of any production. Well done. J
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truba 1 year ago	good stuff ballbagz
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G@rg@mel 1 year ago	nice answer to nice question ! well done ! nice quote betaone !
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barryhatrick 1 year ago	Sounds like a good cobbler. Nice work OB.
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Zeal 1 year ago	"So many young DJs now you could take any of their sets and put the 100 songs they played in a bag and shake it up they’d all sound the same and it’s blank and it’s boring frankly... So many kids play now cos it’s easy, fun and cool but the music is boring as hell.." I'd have to agree with that. Quite a few mixes I hear these days have very little variety. 70mins of 'jackin' house ..... no tempo change, no variation of genre, no journey, no progression. The older guys like Laurent had a more adventurous spirit music wise. Thanks for the interview Ollie.
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Ollie Brooke 1 year ago	Nps, i just ask him baloney I wanna know about really - pretty self-indulgent but it's not everyday you get the chance to pick the brains of ppl like him is it!?
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kibbles 1 year ago	would be keen to catch him dj next time he's out, heard a mix of his, changed through a slew of genres within like 25 min, and all done with subtely and class too. Was a bit of an influence for me about a year ago.
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Kid Deep 1 year ago	Yeh read it yesterday, I got the feeling that the whole interview was like "whats wrong with house today" but threw Laurents eyes. I enjoyed it & looking forward to the Tommy Trash/Truba interviews. Thanks Ollie
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Ollie Brooke 1 year ago	Well we all know what's right with House today, just thought it was worth getting an informed opinion on what's wrong and why it's wrong really...
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Kid Deep 1 year ago	Its your interview, ask what YOU want to ask really...
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Ollie Brooke 1 year ago	I did!
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Kid Deep 1 year ago	I love you to hun
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PLD 1 year ago	Ollie, you are man from big O. )
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kibbles 1 year ago	i wouldnt mind interviewing a couple of house jocks actually, would be interested to see what i ask them at this point in my journey... wheres that cunker kerri chandler at
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Ollie Brooke 1 year ago	"Why do you still play play House you conformist safe cunker?"
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kibbles 1 year ago	maybe some of the detroit cunkers, they always seem to have a broad perspective when talking about the history of music. most dj's dont even listen to house music outside of clubs anyways
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Kid Deep 1 year ago	LOL @ OB KBS interviewing Stafford Bro's I'd read that
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deeperbeats 1 year ago	Hi Ollie, good honest interview, the man speaks from the heart,Deeperbeats
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louis01 1 year ago	Not many in the scene like him! This is how it should be!
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Hams 1 year ago	get hold of PVD for an interview!
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souldonkey 1 year ago	nice read...
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