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Laurent Garnier on all fronts
The DJ Who Never Sleeps
Paris
03/08/2007 -
There appear to be two Laurent Garniers operating in the music world: the globe-trotting club DJ and the studio-based musician. And it has become clear that the fans of the former are not necessarily fans of the latter! While DJ Garnier sits up in his DJ box, getting the world’s dancefloors grooving, Garnier the musician broods in his studio, experimenting with a more introspective sound or collaborating with fellow iconoclasts. While most DJs, frustrated at playing other people’s music all the time, will be tempted to make their own album at some point, Garnier’s case is a little different. He has always assumed his double identity and accepted the risk of alienating both of his fanbases at one time or another.
"I feel that composing my own tracks is a logical follow-on from DJ-ing", he says, "I got to travel massively after the release of my single Wake Up. It was a real calling card that opened a lot of doors for me. I ended up performing in clubs all over the world… I started out doing maxi singles with the aim of making clubbers dance, but my real aim in pursuing music after that was to make albums - and albums correspond to a radically different format!"
Thinking outside the DJ box
Garnier had long dreamt of stepping out of the shadows of his DJ box and turning his turntable activity into a live concert in front of an audience. And 1998 proved to be the major turning-point in his career in that respect. After winning a coveted ‘Victoire de la Musique’ award for his album 30, Garnier had the opportunity to perform at a major Parisian music venue, L’Olympia. He was determined to put on a real show for this occasion. "The thing is", he says, "if you want to reach out to a new audience, you can’t just have this guy sitting all alone on stage behind a computer who looks like he’s sending e-mails or something. Personally, I wouldn’t buy that for a moment!" Instead, Garnier pulled out all the stops, collaborating with the performance arts company Les Nuits Blanches to create a visually more interesting show which combined circus acts and street performers gyrating to his electro beats.
Ten years on, Garnier is still performing his own balancing act, juggling his club appearances as a DJ and his recording work. "I’m 40 years old now", he says, "I don’t listen to dance music from 8 in the morning to 8 at night! My life’s changed and I listen to a lot of different stuff now… Over the years I’ve had to listen to people claiming DJs aren’t real musicians and I’ve had to fight long and hard against that prejudice." Garnier’s latest project, an audacious electro-jazz fusion dreamt up in conjunction with Bugge Wesseltoft, Benjamin Rippert (keyboards) and Philippe Nadaud (brass), has been keeping him busy on the festival circuit and playing at live venues this summer. Once again, Garnier has attempted to straddle the divide between electro fans and jazz aficionados - and he appears to be satisfied that he has kept everyone happy. "We performed at Les Eurockéennes and I think we literally blew the audience away there. Then a fortnight later we brought the house down at the Montreux jazz festival!" he beams.
Waving a conductor’s baton
On these occasions Garnier steps centre stage, weaving a total osmosis of instruments and machines as he whips up a vibrant mix of techno beats, squealing brass instruments and hypnotic keyboards. "I turn myself into a real orchestra conductor on stage", he says, "The musicians know the basic themes, but the rest is total improvisation. The majority of people who enjoyed my previous albums probably won’t like the new one - and vice versa! I appreciate that Public Outburst is not an easy album to listen to. It wasn’t made with techno fans in mind, but I hope that somewhere down the line they’ll enjoy it, too!"
Public Outburst, recorded live at various concerts, features reworkings of several tracks from Garnier’s last album, The Cloud Making Machine, as well as a number of new bonus tracks. While the jury is still out on the new album, Garnier continues his pioneering work as the roving ambassador of electro. He recently composed stage music for ballets by Angelin Prejlocaj and Marie-Claude Pietragalla and he has also been involved in recreating soundtracks for archive films. "I worked with people from the Louvre who then introduced me to the guys from the Musée Albert-Khan," he says, "and I ended up composing the soundtrack for a film from the archives there. I’ll be repeating the experience again in 2007 at the Roque d’Anthéron piano festival, working with a pianist. I’ve created compositions based on other people’s music, a mix of around 180 tracks to go with Epstein’s Finis Terrae."
As for future projects, Garnier is keeping them pretty close to his chest right now, simply hinting that composing soundtracks for contemporary movies could be just around the corner. "There’s something brewing on that front right now!" he says with a knowing smile. Meanwhile, continuing to juggle his busy schedule between festival and club appearances, Garnier is also working on a film adaptation of Électrochoc (the book he co-authored with journalist David Brun-Lambert in 2003). Looks like Garnier should officially become known as the DJ who never sleeps!
Laurent Garnier, Bugge Wesseltoft, Philippe Nadaud, Benjamin Rippert Public Outburst (F Com/Pias) 2007.
Nicolas Dambre
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