Laurent Garnier

By the time I was ten years old my bedroom looked like a nightclub. There were strobes, multi-coloured flashing lights, a disco ball, a DJ booth and a dance floor. When I switched on my equipment hundreds of tiny white lights would flit across my bedroom ceiling and walls. I switched on my disco ball every night. I only dreamt of one thing: making people dance." Laurent Garnier in "Electrochoc" by Laurent Garnier and David Brun-Lambert Laurent Garnier has been making the planet dance for 30 years. One of the pioneering DJs of the dance music scene, he experienced first-hand the euphoria of the acid-house movement in Manchester. He then went on to Wake Up and shake up Paris nightlife, from La Luna to the Palace, not forgetting the Rex Club. As one of the leading lights in French dance music, he has spread his message across the planet, from raves to warehouse parties, clubs to festivals. He is a multi-faceted eclectic artist whose impact on the music scene is far-reaching. But above all he is a DJ, a true DJ. Musical eclecticism is also at the heart of Laurent Garnier's contribution to radio. In 2003, among other radio shows which he has contributed worlwide, he creates PBB “Pedro's Broadcasting Basement”, his own non-stop 24 hours radio channel online. Laurent Garnier is an artist who never stands still. He is tireless in his enthusiasm and is always bursting with new ideas and projects. As well as the demands of his DJ-ing, Laurent Garnier is also well-respected music producer. His first big hits (Acid Eiffel and Wake Up), both soundtracks to the explosion of dance music in France, have paved the way for a series of albums that are both elaborate and multi-layered. In the space of six celebrated albums, Laurent Garnier has embarked upon a remarkable journey. His latest releases have been on Kompakt, Rekids et Cod3 QR, the label he founded anonymously in 2018 with Scan X. During 4 years of mystery, the enigmatic label presented artists' names first coded, then revealed later. Unavoidable artists such as Agents Of Time or Joe Farr were then revealed. Finally the 10th of September 2021, it was revealed that Laurent Garnier and Scan X were behind the French techno project from the beginning with the launch of the 10th release of the label. In 2021, the psychedelic garage duo The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier produced together the album “De Pelicula”, a record that feels like a walk on the wild side, one straight out of a film noir that was spawned from the need to write music that tells a story and rattles all traditional patterns in a (super)sonic trance. New music by Laurent Garnier is expected to be released in 2022. His musical journey is described in the book Electrochoc that Laurent Garnier and the journalist-writer David Brun-Lambert wrote together (released in 2003, and then updated in 2013) which sold 25 000 copies in France alone. Electrochoc is a publishing hit and has subsequently been translated into several other languages including English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian and even Croatian. Laurent Garnier is also a composer for the cinema, television and theatre. In the past, he wrote the music for the films SDF Go Home and Qu’Allah Bénisse La France, for the documentary Play, for the animated film Globi and the Stolen Shadows and the French television show Groland. For theatre, Laurent Garnier has composed the music for contemporary dance choreographers Angelin Preljocaj (Fire Sketch and Suivront Mille Ans de Calme) and Marie-Claude Pietragalla. In 2015 he also produced the album “Scarifications” for the French rapper Abd Al Malik. In the last years, Laurent has composed tracks for the soundtrack of the film Paris est à nous (2019) as well as the soundtrack of the documentary Le Roi Batard (2020), awarded at the Jackson Wild Film Festival this year. He is currently composing the soundtrack for the film Entre la vie et la mort de Giordano Gederlini (released planned for 2022 – distributed by Le Pacte). After 30 years devoted to music, Laurent has been made Chévalier de la Légion d´Honneur in 2017.