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Album review


Laurent Garnier

Retrospective 94-06 


Paris 

26/09/2006 - 

No lounging round on the beach for Laurent Garnier this past holiday season! The French DJ and electro star had an extremely busy summer, assuring a hectic schedule of club appearances and, in between dates, putting the final touches to his new double-album compilation Retrospective 94-06.

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Retrospective 94-06 - which arrived in record stores to greet French holiday-makers returning for the "rentrée" - retraces the career of the best-known French DJ on the planet via a handful of Garnier's most famous club anthems and other highlights from his impressive discography, ranging from his debut album, Shot in the Dark, right up to his latest, Cloud Machine (his fourth to date).

The 23 tracks on the 2-CD compilation have all been remastered. What's more, this is the first time many of them have been made available to fans. Notably, Acid Eiffel and Man with The Red Face are released here in the version Garnier recorded with Bugge Wesseltoft when the two DJs first appeared live on stage together. Retrospective 94-06 also includes a video version of Flashback (plus dialogues!) and a handful of remixes “Lolo” made for the likes of Carl Craig, DJ Marky, Alex Attias and Elegia.

Garnier's retrospective provides an interesting snapshot of music history over the past two decades and would have greatly benefited from an accompanying booklet with at least a few lines on each track, placing it in context. Listening to seminal moments such as Acid Eiffel with hindsight inevitably puts a different slant on things, leaving the first Garnier-Wesseltoft collaboration sounding over-simplistic in its basic trance-style construction.

Since then, both Garnier and Wesseltoft have gone on to push back musical and technological boundaries, widening their own personal horizons and their fans' along with them. Anyone doubting that should take a look at Garnier's official website, where the DJ and producer's voracious musical appetite embarks on a veritable feeding frenzy.

Laurent Garnier Retrospective 94-06 (F-Comm/PIAS) 2006

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