Laurent Garnier is in a good mood when we see each other on Zoom a few days before his evening at the Magazzini Generali where he will play a 3-hour DJ set this evening: «I'm happy to return to Italy, first in Milan and on Saturday in Naples, together with Irvine Welsh . I'm not sure what to expect with Welsh… (laughing) maybe we'll write a book?”
Certainly his connection with Italy has distant roots, and his childhood dream of becoming a DJ was fueled by suggestions at the entrances of Romagna discos. «Every summer I went to Cattolica with my family. I dreamed of going to nightclubs, but I was only 12 years old, it was impossible. I liked the La Baia Imperiale club, it had an image of Marylin Monroe as its logo, and I too had her image plastered on the walls in my little room as a kid along with strobe lights, sequined curtains, records everywhere. I wanted to live in a club.” For the DJ of DJs, as he is often called, at that time his brother and mother danced: «Every time my parents had parties at home, and it happened often, I tried to attract their friends to my room, and make them dance on my dancefloor.”
Today his audience is international and wherever he goes, at 58 years old, Laurent Garnier fills the slopes. His DJ sets are now considered rituals, concerts, an anthology of the evolution of techno music, from when he started very young at the Haçienda in Manchester, revealing the sound overseas, to when he decided to contaminate it with his boundless musical culture. «My secret? Be sincere. I have always been very sincere about my work. I think I have never accepted compromises. In French we say: je suis resté droit dans mes chaussures (I stayed in my shoes, ed.). That could be the secret to my longevity.”
Respect towards an artist, according to Garnier, comes from there: coherence, curiosity, the devil away from your soul and an audience of ravers who have grown up with him. «Today when I play I see clubbers my age dancing, I recognize them, they know my songs, they foresee them, they wait for them, they dance to them as if they were still 20 years old. But there are also many young people who may have never heard of the Haçienda in Manchester, but who listen to me because my musical research is relentless, attentive to new things. If I had stuck with the old music I idolized, I would have become an asshole. My job as a DJ is to look for new things in music, and mix it, reinvent it. The thing that interests me is the mélange. Even my audience prefers it mixed. Young and old. That is the winning formula, always.”
The disciples of Laurent Garnier are transversal, who is not only a DJ, in fact, but also a producer, radio speaker, sushi-style chef, cinephile and dance enthusiast (he collaborated with the choreographer Marie Claude Pietragalla and with Angelin Preljocaj). There are thousands who, from the years when techno arrived from Detroit (“young people gathered in one place to listen to music, do you understand how beautiful it is?”), follow it like a pied piper. Through the sound of the 80s, when Thatcher ruled Great Britain and young people sought relief by annihilating themselves in electronic music, Laurent Garnier intercepted a moment and a context “ready for revolution”. Of those years he says: «Acid house was the soundtrack of that need, of that transformation». Then everything changed.
«Now, after 35 years, there is almost mass tourism for this music; being in many places has globalized it. And then there was also covid, and post-covid, with some DJs who became famous thanks to the internet. We are at the point that techno, which was the hardest, most martial, sometimes difficult sound, has become the most commercial, most popular dance, different from what it was at the beginning, that clandestine gathering where we all recognized ourselves as similar ».
The club is the dimension of Laurent Garnier. He is keen to reiterate this – and often – in our chat. In his story there is not only melancholy for a place where distances are canceled and the magic of sound is a collective therapy, there is something else, more intimate and important, for an artist. «I find that the club has a kind of identity, it's the best place to listen to my music. In the clubs, under the dancefloor, there are the roots of this music, the closest family. We must preserve this energy”, he insists, “we must not let it escape too much from the clubs, otherwise we risk seeing it die”. «The club is the place where the DJ has more time to express himself and where people can abandon themselves, forget themselves, go on a journey with whoever plays, with me. Clubs are the places where the artist can express himself best. There I express my soul.”
Never ask an old guard DJ who knows how to play everything, who knows how to mix everything, and who cites Carl Cox among his companions of snacks and artistic coherence, for an opinion on TikToker DJs. «I will be very clear. First thing: I don't have Tik Tok and I don't care. Second, I don't give a damn about TikTok DJs and their followers. Third and last: if someone sends me music and declares their followers in the introduction email, I delete it immediately without even listening. If these people's concern is the number of followers, I don't want to deal with it. Fuck you. TikTokers only make short videos, while the DJ's luxury is time. A trip with the DJ starts after 3 hours, what are these TikTokers selling? I don't want to know.”
We regain the smile when talking about the project he created for Fabric, the London club par excellence: «They asked me to be the master of ceremonies for Fabric presentsa DJ mix that incorporates all the electronic sphere imaginable, in all possible musical styles: UK bass, techno, house. A very prestigious project for the 25 years of Fabric. At the beginning, however, I admit that I refused, I thought I wasn't the best person to do it. In these 25 years I have only played there three times and there were certainly more representative DJs than me. But they insisted. I was very pleased. So I thought about it because I was looking for something ambitious and I proposed 4 mixes, one for each room of the club and for each musical style. The first is techno, very deep, from Detroit to today, the second is a mix of house that travels to Africa, Chicago, NYC, Europe. The third concerns UK bass up to drum'n'bass.” And the fourth? «Ambient, softer electronics», explains Garnier thoughtfully: «because what if after the club people wanted to continue the evening at home? The fourth room of Fabric is in each of us's living rooms. And voilà.”
The four mixes, with an EP made up of 4 Garnier singles, will be released on November 29th while the mega party at Fabric in London is scheduled for December 7th. «This could be the last mix I do» comments Garnier, lowering his voice a little. So are the rumors about his imminent retirement true? So he replies: «It's true, I'm thinking of retiring… Listen, I'll be 60 in a year and a half. I'm closer to the exit than the entrance. I won't stop sharing music. I will continue to do radio, I have my own record label, I always have that vital need to listen to music, play it, get to know it, have it discovered. I go there every day, you know? I've been listening to music since 9 this morning, do you understand what that means? I listened to 100 albums today, and tomorrow it will be 80. I need to calm down! He sighs, then continues: «I always enjoy playing, and it will happen again next year. But from 2025, however, I will get myself together. The love for music, however, can never stop.”
We say goodbye with the promise that «I'll do it again some evenings, good luck», with the revelation that when he released his first single A bout de souffle he didn't know there was a film by Jean-Luc Godard with the same title (“then I recovered, now I know everything about the Nouvelle Vague!”) and with an unexpected comment on the dancefloor style: “People dance in a strange, primitive, almost childish. They abandon themselves. The fact that this music makes them dance for 6 hours, however, is brilliant” And above all with the promise of learning to knead pizza: “it's one of my next projects, or perhaps my destiny.”
The zoom image ends with his voice assuring me: «Yes! What you see in this room are not books, but records! They are 14 thousand, à bientôt». Which for us is tonight at the Magazzini Generali in Milan. I feel love.