Interview with Laurent Garnier
Reported by Manu Ekanayake
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Submitted 06-08-03 09:41
Reading’s Checkpoint Charlie has been spewing forth quality house at a rate of knots for the past ten years. The brainchild of people who both dared to dream, and lived to dance, this night is one of the many quality events that show London how it’s done. A sweatbox of a (generally) Rock venue, and great DJs who’ve known the promoters for a decade, combine to form an intimate but welcoming gathering of 250-300 people on the first Thursday of every month.
To celebrate the madness, an old friend to the club was invited back, as he often is for birthday celebrations. A certain Gallic gentleman, who first DJ’ed in the UK when he played at the Hacienda in ’88, and has the rare accolade of having once been Head Chef at Dry Bar! His Acid House credentials aside, his music takes in High NRG bass and combines it effortlessly with lush synth lines, making pit-stops at every other musical genre along the way. His brand of House transcends the labelling of today’s fractured scene, his elemental sound far beyond the words ‘Hard’ or ‘Tech’. Whatever you want to call it, he’s one of the few names that will bring a smile to anyone in clubland. Interested?
Post Checkpoint Charlie’s 10th Anniversary party, 8/9 May, 2.30 am. In the tattered shell of Reading’s After Dark Club, Laurent Garnier speaks... (Bold indicates LG’s words)
So, ten yrs of Checkpoint, how do you feel about it?
I can’t remember when is the first time I came..?
The rumour is tonight that you were the first person to play..?
No, I don’t think so...
You’ve got to ask Dave...Dave, when did I first play Checkpoint?
About 8 yrs ago? (Dave agrees, and remembers that Cal Cox carried Laurent’s records that time, and later asked if he could play the club himself. Dave reluctantly agreed!)
He went to the other club, Checkpoint moved to the other, bigger club...
Alleycats?
Yeah, I did a birthday, one birthday where he had the Go-go dancers dressed as policeman...
I’ve heard of that....
He had this guy, actually one of the photographers from Muzik magazine, he came on dressed as a policeman, there was three or four of them, and I played ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer, and everyone was really freaking out, they were just chucking drugs everywhere, like ...fucking hell, this is mad!
I mean, you want to play a long set, don’t you?
Yeah, I always do, I don’t know what you mean by ‘long’?
Well, most people will play an hour at Checkpoint...
Three or four hours is my thing, yes. I mean I can do much longer, but usually, when I come to England I like to do four hours
I’ve read about you saying that you were especially upset you didn’t get a chance to play the States recently (loss of Visa etc) because you like to provide a long ‘experience’ for people.
Well, I don’t travel often, and I think sometimes people wait quite a while to come back and see you, and I think you do have to respect these people, I mean yeah, you get paid, but I’m there to have a good time, and to try to give as much as I can. I want to take people on a longer journey, and show them as much as you can. I mean, to play 3 or 4 records, what’s the fucking point? I might as well stay home, and do it via Internet. No, it’s true you know, I mean when I come here, I started mellow, then I bought it up, then I bought it down, then I played Edwin Starr (War!) and I finished with Prodigy [Out Of Space]. At the end of the day, if I had an hour it would be very incoherent.
I’d like to say that WAR went down so well....
Yeah, it did, I don’t usually play it in the middle, I did because I saw all these balaclavas, and I thought fuck it, might as well make my point now. I usually like playing at the end. It’s some kind of a journey, I know it’s a little corny to say that, but I’m trying to be as open as I can, to be as honest as I can.
In London at the moment we’re seeing a resurgence of call-this no-for-info parties..
Good, good
And you’ve never been a DJ that says, ...I play techno, I play House.
I play everything, I think it’s boring to go to a club, and just listen to techno, listen to breakbeat all night. I hate that, as I love techno, I love breakbeat, I love House, I think it’s about fucking time, after 15 yrs of this music, we’re starting to mix music again, to mix music, to mix beats on the same night. You can have all different types of moods, of beats because otherwise we’re narrowing it down, and just killing it! For a long time I’ve mixed a lot of things together, it’s about bloody time things are coming back together.
Do you like playing small clubs?
I love it. It’s funny, cos I was thinking about it when playing, cos last night I was playing for 7000 people
Was that in Paris?
Yes.
Was that with Jeff Mills?
Yes, and a guy called Vitalic.
The guy who did La Rock 01?
That’s the one, and there was a guy called Manu le Malin, a very hardcore DJ...
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Haven’t you dedicated a track to him [Geometric Worlds on Shot in the Dark]
Yes, Manu is a very good friend of mine. There was the Hacker, who’s a good friend of mine. Yesterday it was all the friends, the Hacker, Vitalic I know him very well, Manu I know very well, and Jeff. It was like the big posse, like the old days. The ‘old school posse’, it was good fun. It’s bizarre, to switch from 7000, where you’re in a huge environment, I did 3 hours, which is very good for a rave, usually you have shorter sets. You’ve got to bang it out; I could never have played WAR! But the funny thing is, I was getting my records ready for Monday-I’m doing a salsa and Latino set for Giles Patterson in London. And the contrast of playing hip hop, soul, Latino, and Brazilian, last night playing all this hard stuff, and tonight playing to 200 people and being able to play Prodigy and shit like this, I love that. That’s the great thing about switching from a big place to a small place. What I like about small places is, as a DJ, you’re with the crowd, you’re next to them, there’s no ‘the DJ’s up there and the crowds down there’, we’re all together, and we’re sharing it together. I like that, that’s why I like smaller clubs. It’s a big sharing thing. You have to be with the people, really be together. You get all these kids coming up to you, shaking your hand, saying thank you, and you can see their faces, you feel the vibe right away.
What do you think of the work that SLAM is doing? They’ve been real originators in Scotland.
It’s funny, we’ve been friends for a long time, you know I’ve got a label called F communication, and before that I was on a label called FNAC. At the beginning of F com, we were working with some people called Play It Again Sam, PIAS, were distributing our records, and we actually bought Soma to PIAS in France to distribute their stuff, we bought Warp and we bought Soma. So these are labels we’ve been working with for a long time, and after that my wife started working with PIAS, and she was distributing Soma, so we’ve got a strong link, all I can say is their great, you only work with people you feel good with, so I can only say good things about them; I’ve always been a big fan.
Slight segue, but on Slam’s recent Fabric CD, the last track is an Underground Resistance, Mad Mike Banks track, some of the more jazzy stuff. You’ve talked about his as being the one person you’d pick out (as a main ‘player’, in the Jockey Slut 10 yr anniversary supplement). Will this bring his music to more people, I’m very new to it myself, and most of what I know is his own ‘legend’.
Bring his music to new people is not an easy thing, as Mike doesn’t like to travel very much, he likes to keep it underground, whenever he comes to Europe he’s usually hiding, it’s not like you could go to Detroit and meet him... You’ve probably never seen a picture of him. Mike is an old friend of mine, because I’ve been to Detroit many times, I’m organising a UR night.
Of course, you had your own Thurs night didn’t you Laurent, at the Rex club in Paris.
The thing is at the Rex we’re doing the 15th birthday, so I’ve organised 10 parties, for 15 days. So there are a lot of things going on at the moment. But, what I like about Mike is the way he...takes people out of their lives. The whole thing about Detroit, if you go there, you’ll see how much struggle there is there. And for some the only way out of guns, drugs, shit like this, well, one of the only ways out is making music. So he goes to prisons, says ...next time, come to us, make some music, travel, we’ll look after you. Instead of you being in the street with a gun, come and see us, and you’ll be able to something for yourself. What I like about this guy is he’s injecting money in a city that’s SO fucked up, he believes in it very strongly, he hasn’t been in Europe, selling all his music very cheaply, putting all the UR stuff everywhere. He always kept it to what he believed in, very much like Motown used to be in the beginning. Motown was like a small industry, distributing a few records, doing it all from one building, this is what Mike does. I’ve had loads of his tracks on compilations, and every time you have to give money back to some charity, he has got a real heart.
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A few last words on the English scene? On Fabric, The End, Billy Nasty’s new venue The Egg?
Well, I’ve played at Fabric and had a good time, I’ve always done a lot of the End, I have a good relationship with them, I only work with people where there’s a relationship, then you feel like you’re home. I haven’t been to Billy’s club; I mean I’ve known Billy for years now... The thing is I haven’t been to England that much recently, because I’ve cut down a little on Dj’ing, I’ve been doing some other things. I’m actually writing a book at the moment, I’ve got a compilation coming out, my DVD came out, I’ve just done the music for a film about the homeless, I’m making music with Scan X for a cartoon. I’ve cut down a bit on Dj’ing, but I’m getting back to it now. The stopping doing it live, then starting again when the album’s out next year, it kind of, I must say, I stopped for a while. I stopped reading the Press, I must say, not just the English one, the entire musical press, I needed a while to clear my head and listen to other things, and I really focused on other things. And apart form music I hear from England, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what’s happening. I hear all these things like ...The kids don’t want to listen to this music anymore, which is the same in France, when your 14 years old, you have nothing to dt the new things come in. The future is about sharing beats, it has to be. If we carry on playing one single kind of music in clubs we’re going to kill everything.[/b]
Last words about people taking music off the Internet?
Well, what can I say? Germany has lost 50% of the music market, France is loosing 40% this yr, so, it’s very intelligent of people to do it, but basically if they carry on, half the record companies, majors and minor labels alike, the ones trying to do something different, to ‘feed’ your head with good music, well...I’m actually getting quite sad about it. Because, unfortunately, if that carries on, maybe my record company may not carry on. Not to say we’re in a bad way or anything like that, but we’re not doing as well as we were. Electronic music, and Rock as well now, I think, because the kids grow up listening to rock, and they grow up around computers as well, so much more than we did. You’re 14, you’ve had a computer since the age of 10, or whatever, so it’s completely normal to be getting free music off the Net. If the UK gets hit like Germany did, I mean Germany’s fucked, France is not very health, a few others are going, if it carries on there will be no more music...well no more interesting music. All there’ll be will be big powerful motherfuckers, formatting everything you’ll listen to, and the music will get absolutely shite!! So before downloading for free, and thinking everything should be free, just think a little bit further. We’ve got to keep the small artist alive, we really have. Otherwise, these people will go and work somewhere else!
Absolutely my last question, any highlights of the set for you?
It was fun playing the all the electro tracks, especially that Detroit track with the guy talking over it, which was unusual! It was really funky, these like MCs talking over the record, and I thought ... this’ll never go down, but everybody was smiling, everyone was cool. It was good fun, I enjoyed it (grins).
Later Laurent tells a story: ...Last night a girl came up to me, she was crying her eyes out, this is the first time something like this happened to me, so I asked her what was up with her, and she said ...Oh, you’re music is so beautiful and, well, she must have been off her head (laughs), but I thought, if I touched her that much, well, it’s scary! I mean, she was really crying, she wasn’t happy to meet me, she was really hurt. She kept saying the music was amazing, and that she was happy, but well... I suppose there have been a couple [of experiences] like that. Last night though, everyone was having a good time, and not just a ... oh, that’s cool ... time, but genuinely enjoying themselves.... that’s the good thing about places like this...which there are few of.
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