Laurent Garnier Interview

Articles

Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:08

“Paris has always been a city orientated more towards glitter and money than the real core of music. Rock & roll has always been big in Paris and jazz but as far as techno is concerned, apart from three or four underground places, Paris is empty. Nightlife there is more about having models and the right fashion people in the club rather than playing good music and people going crazy for it.”

20 years after establishing himself as France’s first superstar DJ, Laurent Garnier remains one of dance culture’s most opinionated, outspoken characters, whether chatting about his birthplace or the latter-day clubland celebrity of the same name.

“Paris Hilton? I think she’s the biggest fucking joke!” he snorts when quizzed about the American socialite, “Who the fuck is she? She’s just a party girl with lots of money. Great! That doesn’t make her exciting, sorry.”

Infamous as a DJ for playing marathon sets (his minimum these days is 6 hours) he’s also renowned for covering myriad musical bases, from old school jazz to hip hop to straight-ahead Detroit techno, an approach he’s applied precisely to new album ‘Tales Of A Kleptomaniac’. Though one website defines kleptomania as ‘an overwhelming impulse to steal’ and Laurent himself labels DJs the biggest kleptomaniacs on Earth’, he’s quick to absolve any negative connotations the album title might suggest.

“I know kleptomania is a pathology, this is why we linked it with the word ‘tale’,” he explains.

“’Tale’ is quite a nice word, you think of fairy tale. So we’re almost telling a fairy story in the land of kleptomania.”

So did he embark on any (or many?) shoplifting expeditions as a teenager?

“No I was not stealing in shops, I wasn’t that naughty,” he confesses, “I was doing other stupid teenage things but not that.”

Moving to England from his Paris home aged 16 to become a silver service waiter at the French Embassy he ended up in Manchester in 1986 just as acid house exploded. Becoming one of the first DJ stars at the Hacienda (as DJ Pedro) he returned to France to complete national service before returning to the decks and never looking back. 20 years on, he remains a keen Anglophile, though admits he’s disappointed by the decidedly mixed reception his new album as so far received from the British press.

“I was talking about this to a French journalist last week telling them I’ve done tons of interviews for France, Australia, Belgium, Holland, everywhere, but for England I only did three or four websites: no more than that. The magazines didn’t want to talk to me. Because they don’t understand the album,” he says.

“The French journalist was telling me ‘look at the top editors of magazines such as NME, they’re very young and they haven’t even heard of The Stooges.’ I will tell you it’s the same in house and techno too: how the hell can you think my album is out of touch when it’s directly tickling all the roots of that music? I can understand people not liking it but to not understand it shows a lack of knowledge of dance music. When you’re a music journalist you need to know about music.”

The album is being super-well received in Germany, super-well received in France whereas in England it’s really half hearted,” he complains.

“Half of them really like it, the other half don’t get it. It goes way above their heads. Maybe there’s too much music in England. They love categorising things and the album doesn’t fit into any particular category. I’m sorry, I don’t want to do like everybody else does.”

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Starting with the album, are you a perfectionist in the studio?

Laurent Garnier: “I’m never happy. I need someone like the record company to come up to me and say ‘now you shut up, you give us the album and you don’t touch it any more’. 80% of the album was made last year but then two days before we burned it I changed a track. I’ll be happy with a track then I’ll play it out and think ‘oh no, the bass is not loud enough’. The more I get into production the harder it is to make me happy. Which I think is a good thing.

For me personally the important thing about music is the pleasure it gives me, that first raw feeling. I never think when I listen to a track ‘is the hi-hat good enough, does that effect work, is this long enough or short enough to be played on the radio, is this coherent enough to be played on TV?’ Music for me is very primal, you like it or you don’t. This is why I release so many different styles of music. The first thing I think is ‘am I truthful and honest with this track, or am I lying and just trying to make money?’

Skrufff: It’s certainly unusually titled, why call it Tales of a Kleptomaniac?

Laurent Garnier: “I quite like unusual titles generally, the last album for example was called ‘Cloud Making Machine’, As a DJ, the weird thing about it is that we are telling a story about who we are, by playing little pieces of other people’s music. When you release your own track that belongs to you, your world and your surroundings, DJs take that, remodel it and make themselves who they are. So DJs are the biggest kleptomaniacs on earth. It’s kind of the same when you’re making music, I don’t know any bands who haven’t been influenced by others. I can point out very easily to you the influence of each track and where they come from. I’m not saying this is stealing. People don’t throw things away, they kind of re-use it, it’s recycled.”

Skrufff: Have you had any periods in your career when you’ve got bored of music?

Laurent Garnier: “I’m very lucky because I’ve always taken on lots of different projects. For example, starting to produce was a good step. When I made ‘Cloud Making Machine’ a lot of people didn’t understand the album but I knew where I wanted to go with that, I wanted to start working with cinema, to make music for films and contemporary dancers and that album allowed me to do that. Because of ‘Cloud Making Machine’ I am now working with two of France’s most famous choreographers. Now I’m working on a movie for next year so I’m very lucky. I’ve also never drowned myself in doing too many gigs for the sake of making too much money. I’ve stayed very starved about playing music so I’ve always wanted to go and DJ and rock the floor. Playing music to people is some kind of drug and I want to keep it that way: I want to keep it exciting.”

Skrufff: In a recent interview you mentioned that ten years ago everybody thought techno was dying. . .

Laurent Garnier: “Yeah, funny, huh, when you see the amount of techno records coming out today. In Germany they’re everywhere, even in France you have all this new rave stuff. I don’t think anybody believed techno would be extremely healthy after 20 years but it is.”

Skrufff: Looking at your career on the surface you’ve had success year after year after year, have you made any major mistakes or passed up opportunities you’ve since regretted?

Laurent Garnier: “There’s a couple of tracks I’ve made which on reflection I shouldn’t have released because they were not serious enough. Maybe more towards the beginning of my career. I worked with Jean Michel Jarre for instance and that was a big mistake, I should never have done it because he was not a very nice man. The good thing is that that project never really came out. I can’t regret what I’ve done with F Com, or any of the albums I’ve released because I know why I released them then: at least I was very honest with what I did. I can’t think off the top of my head of a major mistake.

Of course, we all make mistakes, which is a good thing because we learn from them. I know I’m a bit of a pain in the arse, and outspoken but at the end of the day we try to teach our children to be honest, so we have to be honest too. I never feel like I’ve sold myself to the devil, though again I’ve done some parties on occasion with more commercial people thinking ‘maybe if I open the mind of ten or twenty people in there then that’s a good thing’. “

Skrufff: How do you regard VIP/ celebrity parties, do you spin at many?

Laurent Garnier: “Never, I don’t want to. It’s not my thing. I was even asked a by (football player) Thierry Henry to play at a party with either him or another football star and I said ‘no’. Because what would I do? I like playing music and I like telling stories through my music and I really can’t see myself being able to do my thing at places like that. I need to express myself, I’ve never done it for the money, but always for the love of music. So no, no. I don’t see the point. If it’s someone famous who’s been following me for a long time and there’s some kind of story then I would do it, but otherwise no. I was also asked to go and play at a party in Cannes for the film festival and said no.”

Skrufff: There are thousands of releases every week now, how do you view the general standard?

Laurent Garnier: “I receive around a thousand every week and so many of them are good. The crazy thing now is that really poor quality tracks have almost entirely disappeared. Of course, there’s really cheesy stuff out there but even that is well produced and is catering to someone somewhere. I’ve got nothing against commercial music, it’s not my thing and I don’t defend it but I don’t have a problem with it. The funny thing now, is that technology has meant the quality of all music has really gone up.

There are so many tracks now which are on the edge of being really good so it’s harder to select. There are so many tracks I receive today that I would have played 15 years ago, but not now. It’s harder to pick out the best stuff.”

Skrufff: What advice would you have for a new producer trying to get noticed today amongst the thousands of releases?

Laurent Garnier: “(Sighing) I don’t have a solution. It’s the same situation for me. Sometimes I make tracks which I don’t really release but I’ll send them to 20 of my friends, good friends who are all DJs, and reading the feedback from them, 15 out of 20 times they would change something in a track. So is there a good solution? I don’t think so. I sent a track to my friends last week and I’m just getting the feedback now, one said ‘oh, the kick is not loud enough, another said ‘the break is not crazy enough’, then the third one says ‘the break is awesome, I really love it, but you should make the voice crazy after the break’.

If you listened to everybody you would never release your music. The thing I would say to anyone is to make your own tracks the best you can and don’t listen to too many artists’ suggestions. Do your own thing. If you don’t please your neighbour you’ll please your neighbour’s neighbour. You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try to. This is a big mistake, make music the way you’re happy with it; it doesn’t necessarily have to sound fresh and new, it has to sound good; that’s all. What is good music? I don’t know. It’s a very personal trip, there’s no recipe whatsoever.”

Tales Of A Kleptomaniac is out now on F Com records.

http://www.myspace.com/laurentgarnier

Article by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)