Veteran DJ Laurent Garnier on staying relevant after 20 years behind the decks

Laurent Garnier arrives in Manchester on 23rd April for a special Planet-e 20 year celebration at the Warehouse Project. We caught up with the veteran DJ five months into his 18 month L.B.S tour to talk genre mixing, how tracks evolve night after night, and staying relevant as you age.

France’s musical veteran Laurent Garnier doesn’t discriminate between genres. There is no type of music he likes more or less. Instead he understands that dub-step, techno, house and drum ‘n’ base are each branches extending off the same tree. When Garnier hears a song, the vocals are just another instrument adding to the mood of the track.

His 18-month L.B.S tour is further proof that ‘the man with the red face’ is constantly seeking new sonic landscapes. Alongside Scan X and Benjamin Rippert, live tracks are re-created night after night, with no one show being the same. No matter the city Laurent Garnier knows that relevance is key: ‘you’ve got to respect the crowd and observe them’.

Jasmine Phull speaks to Laurent Garnier, the oscillating genre producer who only makes music for himself. Whether that’s to his detriment is yet to be decided.

At age 18 you moved from Paris to London. What was the initial idea behind the move?
I just came out of catering school and to be successful in catering you have to speak English. So moving to London was for a job opportunity.

Did arriving in London make you realise catering wasn’t the direction you wanted to be going in?
I always knew catering was not for me. I wanted to be a DJ from the age of ten. From the age of 14 I started running a pirate radio station and I was DJing at parties. I went to England with all my records because I knew very well deep down that I was going to get a job as a DJ.

You come from a techno background but have now widened your scope to include a variety of musical genres from house, drum ‘n’ bass and dub step. You’ve said dub step is the most inspiring form of music for you at the moment. Why is that? Can you draw similarities between techno and dub step?
Dub-step, techno, house, drum ‘n’ base and most other genres are all from the same family. The only difference is the speed of the tracks or the beat. Sound-wise they’re very similar. We’re using a lot of the same machines. When techno arrived 20 years ago from Detroit, it was the exact mix of everything I liked from funk, soul, jazz, hip hop and early electro. I could hear all this in techno music. Dub-step is another branch, it all comes from the same roots; it’s just different branches of the same tree.

You’ve said you can’t picture yourself DJing when you’re 50. Does DJing have an age limit?
No I don’t think so. When you look at people like Francois Kevorkian he’s still pretty bloody credible. The guy is amazing. There’s no age limit but you have to respect the crowd and you have to observe them. For the last couple of years things have changed drastically. The way we consume music, our relationship with it, how you listen to music and where. It’s all changed. I always ask myself questions: Am I still relevant now? Am I imposing stuff that’s not relevant anymore? I’m constantly asking myself questions. There’s no age for anything as long as you observe.

The presence of the Internet and social media mean you can obtain listeners’ opinions and comments very easily. Do you read any of these ‘reviews’?
The one thing I always say to my manager is: we’re only playing music. We’re not politicians, we’re not changing the face of the world. We’re only playing music. I wait for feedback on my Facebook but sometimes when you search for it you get hurt.

How does being an artist affect the way you hear other people’s music? Are you able to just sit back and listen to music?
I never dissect. For me music has always been ‘a whole’, it doesn’t matter what language it’s sung in. I don’t even try and translate them to understand the words. For me the vocal is part of the track, part of the mood and the atmosphere. I try not to think too much. For me the voice is part of the instrument. I never really ask too many questions when I listen to other’s music or produce my own. When you do a track it’s usually the result of a moment. I never try to copy myself. This is why I might be losing fans because I only make music for myself. I want to be as honest as possible. I don’t want to lie to anyone.

Are you able to recreate the feeling of that ‘moment’ when you are live on stage?
When you’re playing a gig people will feel and hear your mood. When we played London’s Block Festival it was very different to the night before when we played in Newcastle. The same goes for when we played in Belgium. Just because the mood was different; when we’re tired we’re not as stressed. There are different things you can incorporate into your sets. As a DJ playing live you have to deliver. You have to.

How do you feel when you’re in the studio?
Going into the studio is a very lonely thing. You don’t have to produce for anyone. When you play at a gig it’s different; you have to make them dance, that’s the purpose. In the studio there’s no purpose or rules. I guess this is why my stuff is versatile and different and none of my albums sound like the other.

Over the 18-month L.B.S tour you’ll be creating hundreds of new tracks. Will there be a live album released after the tour is over?
I don’t think so. Every track we play is no less than 20 minutes so they’re too long to be released. When you do something on one night it’s because of the night, the mood, the crowd, the time. All this is very important for L.B.S. If we play at version at 6pm it will be very different to the one we play at 2am. We don’t want to ‘recreate’ anything. We’re experimenting with tracks every night so once we’ve gathered the feedback from the crowds we’ll release an album inspired by what the audiences were in to.

L.B.S is an 18-month tour and five months has already flown by. Do you find yourself learning and evolving the set each time?
Yes. Songs are being completely transformed. I’d never thought we’d evolve as much as we have over the last five months. We have some fans that follow you everyone and there’s this one guy who’s seen about 5-6 L.B.S shows in five months. He sent me an email saying he couldn’t believe how much the tracks transform in every show. They are the same tracks but they are so different in each gig. It’s been nice to come back to the club environment.

Interview by: Jasmine Phull

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