By his own admission, Laurent Garnier has always been the right man in the right place at the right time. That might sound overly modest considering the deep level of respect the French DJ has earned over the years, but consider his beginnings.

Working as a chef in Manchester, England, in the late-’80s, Garnier soon started his proper DJ career as a resident at the celebrated Haçienda club. Owned by the label (Factory Records) that was owned by the person (Tony Wilson) who owned the restaurant (The Dry Bar) in which Garnier worked, the Haçienda became world-famous for its initial embracement of the acid house scene – and Garnier was right in the middle of one of dance music’s most seminal moments. Beginning in late 1987, Garnier worked alongside celebrated spinners like Graham Park and Mike Pickering (later of M People fame) and saw how a great party worked on a weekly basis and how a challenging DJ could be the ringleader.

Into the early 1990s – years before Daft Punk, Cassius, and I:Cube brought the global spotlight down on the scene there – Garnier became techno’s unofficial ambassador to France. Playing all the early acid house parties in Paris, Garnier fiercely extolled the virtues of this music from Chicago, Detroit, New York and released music on his own label FNAC (now F Communications) in between a grueling DJ schedule that would take him to Germany, Holland, Belgium, Israel, Greece and points all over the world.

But it was the Thursday nights at Wake Up! – his now-defunct residency at The Rex in Paris – that Garnier’s legend was really started. With dazzling technical mixes that spanned the gamut of electronic dance music, past, present, and future – hard, banging minimal techno, emotion-filled tone poems by way of Detroit, jack trax via Chicago, New York garage classics, London drum-n-bass, German electro – this was the stuff memories are made of. You name it – if it was funky, it figured into those all-night dancefloor symphonies.

By 1993, with the buzz of his DJing expertise captivating clubbers throughout Europe and fueled by the success of his FNAC productions as Alaska (“Lost In Alaska”), Choice (“Acid Eiffel”) and Laurent (the “A Bout de Souffle” EP), Garnier was beginning to solidify his legendary status. Invited that year by Teutonic techno supremo Sven Väth to make his U.S. debut at the New York New Music Seminar showcase for Vath’s own Harthouse label, the 28-year-old Frenchman essentially blew away the German host at his own party and left a crowd filled with the dance music community’s elite completely speechless, stunned by his superb mixing, impeccable track selection, and unparalleled crowd-reading abilities.

Over the past five years, Garnier’s DJ schedule has gradually decreased, shifting his career slowly away from the rigorous demands as a world-class DJ towards a new challenge, one of developing as a producer. His first album, 1994’s Shot In The Dark, was an incomplete and somewhat naive collection of influences, yielding the single, “Astral Dreams.”

Three years later, Garnier’s more mature second effort production-wise, 1997’s 30, revealed a side of a man grappling with the dilemmas and questions of turning 30 and having spent 10 years producing and DJing. Tracks like the Jeff Mills-motivated “Crispy Bacon,” the ghettotrax-inspired “The Hoe,” and “Flashback” seep with a darker, more introspective tone than previous efforts. Still, the rest of the album’s potential felt unrealized.

Now a married man and teamed with a new studio partner, “sound designer” Laurent Collat, the clarity and perspective of Garnier’s years of DJing and production experience show between the grooves of his third album, Unreasonable Behavior (Mute). Easily among his finest recorded moments to date, Unreasonable Behavior is Laurent Garnier with his potential almost entirely maximized. Bolstered by strong moments like the strangely melodic rouser “The Sound of the Big Babou” and his ominous, building jazz-techno masterpiece “The Man with the Red Face,” the album finds Garnier molding his influences into his own vision, rather than merely wearing Chicago and Detroit on his sleeve as his past albums had. Instead of a being a couple standout tracks surrounded by filler, often the case with techno full-lengths, Unreasonable Behavior is very much a complete picture.

Uncompromising and unafraid to speak his mind, Laurent Garnier – who lives outside Paris these days – chatted with DJ Times on the early days at the Haçienda, his philosophy on DJing, the balance between being a DJ, producer, and label head, his perceptions on the scene in America and Europe, the state of the music itself, the making of Unreasonable Behavior and the challenges of presenting his music in a live setting.

DJ Times: It’s well known that you got your start DJing at Manchester’s legendary Haçienda. Can you give me a version of what it was like to be there at that time and how the scene in Manchester and the U.K. inspired you to do what you do today?

Garnier: It was extremely exciting, what can I say? I got offered a job at the Haçienda in September ’87, and they had a full-on house night on Friday, and a mixed night on Saturday with a bit of rock and house and a little bit of salsa. The club was looking to do a new night on Wednesdays, so they approached me because they had heard one of my tapes and they offered me something a little bit different – a mixture of funk, soul, hip hop and house. I’ve been extremely lucky because I went there at the right time, basically, where acid house totally exploded, and I saw a club which was very full of black people on Friday, full of whites on Wednesday become a totally crazy, crazy place with people screaming and shouting for the music and totally mixing [genres] up and the whole scene kicked off from there. (The Haçienda) was a very exciting place to be a DJ, to see the guys from New Order and all these bands from Manchester like the Happy Mondays. Everyone was partying together. It was an exciting vibe for everybody in general. The press was covering the whole acid house feeling and rave parties were starting. We were all in the same boat and it was very friendly, very cool.

DJ Times: In the early ’90s, you and FNAC were the only known French dance music ambassadors. Since then, French music has come to play a major part in the music’s expansion all over the world – producers like Daft Punk, Air, Motorbass/Cassius, Super Discount, I:Cube; labels like Roulé, Versatile, Basenotic. What was it like back then being one of the only ones recognized for promoting, playing, and releasing this music?

Garnier: It was nice. It gave me more anger to fight [to bring recognition to French producers], I guess. But that time is gone. There’s now tons of people representing France, luckily. Sometimes [the anger] was nice, but often I felt a little bit lonely. I don’t anymore, because now it’s a big army, so I don’t feel lonely no more [laughs]. I guess now we are fighting for different things, the right for [techno] music to be accepted everywhere and for people not to say stuff like, “What is that shit? Techno sucks.” I guess I was fighting as much as rock fans were fighting in the ’70s for the right of their music, to try to do something a little bit different and trying to be accepted for what they believed in.

DJ Times: How do you feel your label F Communications fits into the perspective now?

Garnier: F has always been a label that has been respected and compared to a lot of other labels around the world. Not to generalize, F is one of the labels that has the guts to release house as much as ambient, as much as techno, as much as jazzy stuff like Frederic Galliano, and then release much harder and darker music like Scan X. [We’ve released] even more rock-n-roll kind of vibes like Juan Trip, so F would be one of these labels that has been there for a long time, doing its thing, going with the flow, had its ups and downs. We might be a little bit different than a lot of other labels because a lot of labels like to specialize in one style of music. Look at a lot of other labels – American, English, French even – 90-percent of the time, they ’re doing one style of music and F is about being different than that. We’ve always believed in music without boundaries, and that’s what we keep on doing.

DJ Times: What is your role in F now? Do you spend much time in the office?

Garnier: I’ve never spent much time in the office. I guess I represent the label everywhere I go. The way I’ve always worked with Eric [Morand, Garnier’s longtime label partner and F-Comm’s label manager] is that one person is meant to be in the office to work, sorting out contracts and signing things and doing paperwork – which is Eric. I’m a traveler. I need to be in front of the scene, so I can teach kids something, see how people react to our records and to talk to people because I like to talk much more than Eric. Eric doesn’t like to talk as much. It’s very healthy, because I wouldn’t like to spend so much time in the office and he wouldn’t spend so much time out of his house. So we complete each other. Musically, it’s 50/50 as always. If one person doesn’t like a track, we won’t release it. It’s the key to the label. When an artist comes into the label, they’ll talk to Eric first. If Eric says no, then they’ll come to me afterwards in a different surrounding to see if things will change. One is the businessman and the other is the Front of House. When Eric comes with me on the road, he’s tired after two days. When I go to the office, after four hours I’m losing my marbles.

DJ Times: Of the big-name DJs, you’re one of the most versatile out there – you play house, techno, electro, drum-n-bass – everything and you make it all work. What is your philosophy on DJing and how do you plan out working these varying genres into your marathon sets?

Garnier: I’m not versatile for fuck’s sake! Other DJs are narrow-minded – there’s a difference. DJs should be able to play what ever the hell they want. Sometimes, a lot of the young DJs – more the young DJs than the older ones – they close themselves off so much. I mean, the way the scene has changed in the last 10 years, it’s scary. My [live] show, we cannot play anymore in raves in France. We can play in jazz festivals, rock festivals; if I can do the show as a concert, I can do it. But if I try to do my show in a rave, it doesn’t work. The kids, all they want is boom-boom-boom-boom, four-on-the-floor. They just want to dance to that. As soon as you step out of that, they’re just lost. The only way I feel like I get it right is when I DJ now in front of a techno crowd. When I DJ, I will give them two hours of techno, then I will bring them to house, bring out the old Detroit stuff like Carl Craig’s “Desire,” and then whoosh! Bring them back to techno. But it takes a long time to get [a crowd into the right headspace] to do that. A lot of the DJs now, they lock themselves into strictly techno, strictly house, and they don’t push things any further. It’s crap! It’s no good.

DJ Times: So how do you work a crowd?

Garnier: DJs are not there to dictate anything, as a lot of DJs think. We’re just there to give people a good time and I think by being the most open-minded, it’s like a love relationship. When you’re having sex with somebody, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, you know? It depends on your mood, what the other person’s mood is, what interests them. A crowd is the same. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. The whole thing about what I try to do is to pull the crowd into your own world and once you’re there, you can do what you want. But it takes a good two hours to get there. It’s a relationship. [With] every single record you play, you have to put your head up and watch what’s happening on the dancefloor because you have to watch the movement. People go blind when they’re on the dancefloor. If there’s one part they don’t like, they will either leave the dancefloor or they will change their way of dancing. You can see it in their eyes. The biggest thing I do when I DJ is look at people in the eyes. When people are happy, they smile. You know, a look tells so much. I always, always am very careful about that. Every time I DJ, every record I play, I look up and if I feel that one point where I’ve got them all and the mood is right then…boom!

DJ Times: Why do you prefer to play long sets?

Garnier: I prefer to play longer sets because it makes the story bigger. I don’t like giving you a chapter when I could give you the whole story, especially when I go to play places like America, where I go once every three years. Kids would have heard about me and they would pay a lot of money to come see someone they’ve heard about, but never heard before, and they’ll get me for an hour and a half? That’s no good. First of all, out of respect to the crowd, I believe I should play longer because at least they’ll have a better picture of what I do. On the other hand, it gives me more time to push the crowd further. Everywhere I play for five hours, the best time is always the last three hours. It takes two hours to work the crowd, understand them, let them understand you and once that trust is there, then you can push them. But it takes awhile. I actually cancelled a gig in America because of time. A promoter was going to fly me 12 hours to play for 50 minutes. I said to them when they sent me the schedule, “Fuck you, I’m not coming.” “But you’re being paid a lot of money,” they said, and I told them to stick it up their ass and that I wasn’t doing it for the money. Of course, I want to be paid for what I do, but come on, give me half the money and three times more time and I’ll come. The promoter just didn’t get that. He was wasting his money and my time, so I didn’t go.

DJ Times: So many big-name DJs are loading up the booth now with an arsenal of tools beyond two turntables and a mixer – outboard effects units, samplers, CD players, etc. Do you have any of this kind of gear in your rider these days?

Garnier: When I DJ, I DJ, but recently I’ve been doing what I call DJ/live where all the tracks played that are my own are played live. I usually do that with all my equipment plugged into the DJ mixer and then I will mix in tempo into live tracks with the record, then I will mix out of the live tracks into records in tempo as well. Sometimes the crowd doesn’t really know if I’m playing live or playing records and I incorporate two live musicians.

DJ Times: What kind of DJ mixer do your prefer?

Garnier: I’m gonna dissapoint you here. I really like this French one. It’s a really ugly mixer and you can only get them in France, it’s called a Club 7. It’s a very basic mixer, but first of all it’s extremely strong – you can jump on it and it won’t break – and the EQ is very round, very fat, very nice and I feel really good with it. I’m kind of an old-school mixer, I don’t really use the crossfader too much. I use my slides and I use the EQ a lot, so EQ-wise it’s the best mixer I’ve ever played on. Trickwise, I like the Pioneer DJM-600, the one with the effects. It’s a good toy. I love playing with that, but the EQ is not half as good as the Club 7.

DJ Times: Do you feel that DJ gear has gotten better over time?

Garnier: Of course! DJ gear is getting better, computers are getting better, and keyboards are getting better because there’s more demand and the DJ of the past is DJs just being DJs. Now DJs are making music and they want to incorporate effects, either like Richie Hawtin and bringing their own 909 and stuff like that or they start working with machines made for DJ sets and you get a lot of filters, you get a lot of EQs and stuff like that you can put into your DJ thing.

DJ Times: I remember having a conversation with John Acquaviva many years ago and him telling me that being a DJ in this day and age is more than just playing two records.

Garnier: Of course, it’s more than just playing a record from beginning to end. The night creates a whole story. Look at a club like Body & Soul in New York. Those guys are telling a whole story. They’re really careful about the lyrics in the records they play and it’s really nice. DJs think a little bit more now. They’re becoming musicians.

DJ Times: Where are your favorite clubs? For vibe and the crowd? For the technical aspect?

Garnier: Vibewise, and just talking just the vibe that the club gives me, would be Heaven in London. The room brings me something that you do not get in many clubs in the world. There and the room that was the Sound Factory [Twilo in New York]. I’m talking the vibe of the place…that room breathes sweat, breathes life, decadence…it’s got “that,” you know? And in a way the two rooms look quite similar. They both have that kind of “loft” feeling, which is “the place.” Soundwise, that’s a tricky question. You know, [American clubs] used to have great sound. I quite like the sound systems you get in New York, but sometimes these people want to be so perfect in sound that they miss the point. Sometimes they want to push their sound so much that they’re wanking themselves too much over the sound and they forget the rest of the whole night, looking after the crowd, being nice to them, having someone at the door greeting people, making sure the lights are right, stuff like that. Technology-wise, I really like The End in London. It’s a club where I feel good. I like the booth because it’s right in the middle of the dancefloor. I like the concept of the way the club is designed. I quite like the English clubs for that. Soundwise, I really like the sound of The Rex Club in Paris. But the best sound systems I’ve ever played on have to be the ones in Tokyo. These guys, they think a lot about their sound, but it’s not the only concept in their club.

DJ Times: Ideally, what’s a perfect club for you?

Garnier: A good club for me has a good system, great lights and a good light jockey – that makes a big difference. You can have great lights and sound, but if your light jockey doesn’t work his lights well, it’s a disappointment. The best light jockeys I’ve ever seen were at The Haçienda back in ’87. These guys knew exactly what to do. They had nothing in there. The Haçienda had no light show. But these guys were following the music so much that they were making you rush out of the music. There’s this club in Munich, Ultraschall. I think it must be the best club in the world. Ultraschall has the vibe. They understand everything, the concept of nightclubbing, which is greeting someone at the door, having wonderful lighting, a great sound system, putting on the best music, not compromising whatsoever, having décor that’s different than everyone else – that’s their concept. Now for the crowd – Irish people, Scottish people, Japanese people, Belgium and Holland. Those would be my favorite five countries. Man, it rocks! They can rock like hell!

DJ Times: When we first spoke in November of 1993, it was only the second time you’d come over to play in the States and you’ve only been back a handful of times since. Although many of the records and producers that have influenced you, does the U.S. scene hold an interest to you? What are your impressions of the scene in America, 2000 – especially in light of the DEMF drawing a reported 1.5 million people with a largely underground line-up?

Garnier: I don’t really know since I haven’t been to the States in almost three years. Two years ago, I felt like it was just about to start, but it never started…the techno scene. Every time I go, I psyche myself up – yes, yes, [the scene], it’s there, it’s ready, then bang! It’s not. Maybe things have changed a hell of a lot? I know a lot of the English guys have been over to New York and pull a lot of crowds. I felt like when I was there last and playing raves, the kids cared too much about the way they looked and how they danced rather more than going out to the club and enjoying themselves. That’s how I felt when I was in the States last…not everywhere. But especially in New York, people were more interested in the trousers they were wearing, the clips they had in their hair and how they were dancing that the main reason for going out was missing there. It seemed like everyone was there because it was cool to be there and they wouldn’t let themselves go the way they should. It’s a shame because the best music comes from America. The first party I ever did in Detroit in an abandoned school, it looked like nothing. It was the best party I played in America, because no one gave a shit what they were looking like. It was two rooms – me upstairs and Richie Hawtin downstairs. And there were a lot of black people upstairs, not a whole lot of people, but an old crowd, very black and they couldn’t give a shit about what they were wearing. All they cared about was the music. You had to play the right, funky shit. That was the best party I’ve done in America.

DJ Times: Many people regard you as a “DJ’s DJ.’ Who are some of your favorite DJs at the moment?

Garnier: Man, my favorite guys… Jeff Mills would be my man for techno. And I love Jeff when he’s playing house as well. He’s a wonderful house DJ. I’m a big fan of Joe Clausell, he really does it for me these days. I really like Gilles Peterson. I think guys like Gilles or Rainer Truby are absolutely fucking amazing because they play salsa as much as drum-n-bass as much as hip-hop or house. House DJ’s, there’s a French DJ called DJ Deep. He is one of my favorite house DJs. Derrick May has always been one of my main men, but haven’t heard him for a long time. Derrick is one of those DJs that can get me, make me cry. This is rare. There’s a lot of good DJs out there that play great music – Josh Wink is always been a good DJ. I like Josh; he’s always dropped things that no one else plays.

DJ Times: You’ve curtailed your DJ schedule to concentrate more on production. Are you still the avid record consumer you were when you were out DJing more often?

Garnier: Yeah, man…[laughs] oh yeah… I buy a lot of stuff. I still have my radio show, which pushes me to buy at least two hours of brand-new stuff every week, which is a lot of records.

DJ Times: What producers are rocking your world at the moment?

Garnier: Wow, tough question because there’s a lot and there isn’t. Luke Slater is still the man. I think Michael from UR [Underground Resistance head “Mad” Mike Banks] is working very hard trying to get everyone [in Detroit] to make music, but I think they’re concentrating more on traveling and making money out of Europe than the music, which is a bit of a shame. I think these guys should make more music because this is what they’re the best at. I wish Derrick [May] would fucking wake up one day and make a track for fuck’s sake! I’m saying that because I care very much about this music. I care about Underground Resistance, Michael and about Planet E, Transmat… Who else? I think the German guys are doing extremely well at the moment. All these labels like Kanzleramt, Klang Elektronic, beautiful sounds…the best techno at the moment right now is coming out of Germany, no doubt. A lot of young artists in London and England are doing good stuff, very small little labels. Electro is becoming quite big now in England, that’s nice to hear. Chicago is totally falling asleep with that filtered disco bullshit. The French are making great music too, people like The Hacker, Julian Jabre, Deep…But since I’m talking to an American magazine, let me tell you the labels I am missing. I’m missing NuGroove, Trax Records, DJ International. I’m missing labels that had bold visions – Transmat, Fragile. I miss stuff on UR. I know Mike is still making music, but he needs to do more. I just moved my house and today I was unpacking all my Detroit records and going through them. I must say I had tears coming to my eyes. Why were these people so creative 10 years ago and what is happening now? Why don’t we have this music anymore? I guess I’m not the only one waiting, starving, for some more food like that. I’m missing the funkiness of Chicago and sometimes I think New York has closed themselves off into [adopts pretentious, posh accent] house and garage, which I like, but they were crazier years ago. I miss the beginning of Strictly Rhythm – they had so much balls 10 years ago. Now they don’t have that anymore. I’m missing producers that are [creating] without thinking about their money.

DJ Times: But it’s a different time now.

Garnier: Of course it is, but scenes like San Francisco are putting out good records – they’re doing really well. I know it’s a different time, but come on. We’re making music for fuck’s sake! Let’s not think about money. Money is more [a part of things] now than it was then, but I guess I’m a dreamer.

DJ Times: Let’s talk about Unreasonable Behavior. This is your third full-length album and it’s a much more mature record musically and produc- tion-wise than Shot In The Dark and 30. What made this record such a forward step from what you’ve done previously?

Garnier: My wife telling me that she wouldn’t accept from me with the album what she accepted for the last one [laughs]. She’s very hard with me. She loves good music and is quite tough with me. Of course, she’s the first person that listens to my shit. The other people surrounding me were also tougher and would tell me if something’s not good and to go back and work on it. It’s a bit different now, working with a sound engineer, so having time to step out of the studio once you’ve heard a track non-stop for six hours where the sound engineer can do some things with the sound, try a few tricks, mix it all together …this way you’re coming back after a few hours with a fresh head and can say this works, this doesn’t work. That’s the big, big, big difference I had from the other two albums.

DJ Times: How so?

Garnier: Before I used to switch on my machines, work, make a track, record it, and not save anything. So if I had to rework on a track, I couldn’t. The first thing my engineer taught me is to not to throw anything away. Nothing. Not even a fart on microphone. Everything can be reused and will be reused. I had to learn without losing my marbles and tap cancel, cancel, cancel. It was very nice to be able to step out of the studio, let him try to work everything together and come back in a different frame of mind. When I did 30, I was in a funny time when I was still asking myself a lot of questions, “Should I carry on DJing. Should I keep doing this, blah, blah, blah.” I was feeling 30. There were questions, but no answers. I was looking for something. I got a lot of answers to my questions and I’m still bettering myself from three, four years ago and I guess you can feel that. I feel like the album is much more me, much more what I want to do, has more accidents. It’s more personal. I guess it presents me more than anything I’ve done before. It took me more time, I had a lot more tracks than what I released. It’s part of growing up.

DJ Times: You changed engineers this time around from Stephane Dri [aka Scan X] to Laurent Collat [who records for F Com as Elegia]. What brought this about and how has this new presence affected your production?

Garnier: Actually, I never worked with Stephane. He taught me some stuff in the studio, but he never worked with me on my music. I am not a nerd, the kind of guy who spends 24-hours a day in the studio learning every part of a machine. I try to avoid that. I still want to make mistakes and create things accidentally. I like the unknown world. Some people are really into their machines. The way I work with Laurent, Laurent had nothing to do with the music. Laurent would come in when the track was done and never interfered with the music. He came for the mix-down of the track, helping me with levels, making it feel the way I wanted it to. What would take him 10 minutes would take me six hours. [laughs]. When he would come to the studio, his ears would be very fresh and mine would be fucked, so he would make suggestions after we’d mix down to try certain things and rework it. It was very organic. We did a couple mixes together live, like “Greed, Pt. 2,” four hands on the mixer, muting things and doing it live.

DJ Times: What does your studio consist of? What are your favorite pieces of gear?

Garnier: My favorite shit would be my DX-100, my Juno 106, my JD-800, a lot of people don’t like it, but I do. I don’t have a 909. The only drum machine I have is a Novation Drum Station. I like the organic things. I like the Nord Lead. Then after that, it’s all the computer. Without the computer, I wouldn’t do anything, the computer is the heart of [my studio].

DJ Times: One of the highlights of the album for me is “The Man With The Red Face.” What went into the recording of that track from inspiration to the studio to final mix? What gear did you use and how did you use it?

Garnier: Mine is “Downfall.” I like “The Man With The Red Face,” but I’ve been playing it live for two years and I’ve been living with it for a long time since I actually released it. I love the track, love the buildup in it. I actually built the track around the saxophone. You see, I wrote the track when we went to the Montreaux Jazz Festival two years ago. I thought to myself, “I need to have a proper jazz track.” So I did the track for my live show with another saxophonist, we played it live for about nine months. I never thought about releasing it because I thought it was a proper live track and I thought couldn’t work it as a track. Then one day I said to my saxophonist, “I’ve got the loop from ‘The Man With The Red Face,’ why don’t you come down to my studio and let’s record something and we’ll see what happens.” So he played for about 25 minutes and sent him home and then I recorded it, putting in some things and building the track around the saxophone and it worked. I was really happy with it, so what I did was mix it down really rough and I went to DJ in a club the South of France and I dropped it without saying anything and people went absolutely fucking mad! So I thought, “Yeah! Sounds good.” It worked, so I said, “OK, let’s release it.” People like it so much it’s going to be hard to top that one.

DJ Times: “Greed Pt.1” and “Pt. 2” are about the global expansion of new media and the Internet. How do you feel about the Internet as it relates to electronic dance music?

Garnier: It’s not just about dance music. The Internet is great and cool, but there’s people that want to make money off of it. The lyrics go, “On the motorway of the net, I take all I can” and basically I’m talking about people who surf the net for the sake of stealing things, music, images without asking. They’re hurting a lot of people by doing that. You shouldn’t go on the net and steal music on MP3 because if you carry on doing that, half of these musicians will be gone, they won’t be making music anymore. They won’t be able to buy themselves gear or eat out of what they do. I’m not even talking about making money. I’m just talking about feeding themselves. It’s great to be able to make music and put it on the net for free if you want, but if people decide they want to make a career from their music, somehow they’re gonna have to have an income. It’s about all the greediness of Internet use. Now you go on the net, you steal images and pictures and make a record sleeve. Someone else spent time working on that, hang on, think about what you are doing. If you are going to download music and you’re listening to it 25-30 times and you really want it for your record collection, have the decency to go buy the record. It took me a year and a half to make my music. Sometimes it takes an artist three or four years to make their music. People should respect that. Simple.

DJ Times: You’ve always been outspoken and one to stand by your principles and underground, no-sellout attitude. You’ve recently gotten into a war of words in the U.K. press with Paul van Dyk about trance. How do you feel about the genre as it relates to the commercialism of dance music?

Garnier: Paul is a nice guy. The problem is, this thing went way out of context. Let me set things straight here. What I said was that I found it very funny that in the Year 2000 that everybody is voting Paul Van Dyk is voted “Best DJ in England,” especially when Paul Van Dyk was extremely well-known seven years ago during this whole Harthouse, Eye Q, the beginning of trance. Paul was as big as Pascal FEOS, Sven Väth and all those people. And at that time, England was looking at Paul, Sven Väth and all these people like, “They’re doing shit. We don’t like it. Fuck them.” Seven years after, the English press is trying to tell me and everyone else that they just discovered God. I respect Paul a lot and all I said is that Paul is playing exactly the same music he was playing seven years ago, as much as I’m playing the same shit. I play old-school, Chicago, Detroit, techno, house, I haven’t changed. What I find funny is that seven years later, England is trying to push Paul van Dyk and seven years ago, I was listening to him. Don’t try to tell me that this is new. It’s just money pushing this and nothing else.

DJ Times: On the track “Unreasonable Behavior,” you talk about the techno community closing their ears to other music around them. Do you feel that techno music has stagnated?

Garnier: What I was trying to get across was that we should never forget where our music is coming from. We should never forget that the roots of techno have come from other times. Without rock, The Cure, Depeche Mode, with Kraftwerk, jazz, classical music, funk, electro, which was the beginning of hip hop, without disco, without all of it, we would not have techno music. All I’m saying is first of all when you put your foot into something you should know the roots surrounding all that music. If you’re coming into techno, open your eyes and try to check out where this music is coming from. What I can see now when I go to raves and hear DJs, they play one style of music. They specialize in techno, specialize in drum-n-bass, specialize in hard loops, shit or whatever. And that’s totally missing the point of our music. Our music is a mixture of so many things put together that if you close it off to one thing, you’re gonna kill it. And all I hear when I go to raves or go to record shops and try to buy records for the last two years, most of the stuff sounds the same. Everyone in techno is trying to copy Jeff Mills. How many records with hard techno loops are coming out every week? Hundreds and hundreds. What I was saying in the track is that I’m getting pissed off with a lot of people trying to close our music into one box, box it in. They’re gonna kill it all. Don’t forget where we’ve come from and if you open your mind to different things you will push it forward and make our music live.

DJ Times: Over the last year or so, you’ve begun presenting your music to live audiences both in and out of a club setting. Tell us about last summer’s live shows, your live/DJ performances.

Garnier: Well, with the live shows, we’ve created a couple different dimensions because when you travel far, it costs a lot of money to take everyone and everything. The proper live show is myself plus two musicians, a saxophonist and a keyboard player, two contemporary dancers, and projections. On top of that, there’s a person to run the projections, a person to help with the sound, a person to help with the lights, plus a tour manager. With that show, there’s five people on stage, but there’s not five people on stage all the time. It makes it very organic and flows very well. There’s the DJ/live show, which I explained before – me and the two musicians. Then, the live show we’re bringing to America is a modified regular live show with just the two musicians. I’m thinking about filming the dancers so I will still have them “performing,” but not actually there.

DJ Times: Was it an adjustment when you first started playing live to get up there and perform on stage after DJing and being behind the turntables?

Garnier: It wasn’t weird because we started very slowly by doing the DJ/live set-up and once I got comfortable and used to being on stage, we jumped right to the live show. The thing that I’m missing when I’m playing live is not being able to change the track listing of the show faster. When you DJ if you want to change something even a minute before the end of the record you’re playing, you can just take it off and take a risk. When you play live everything is set. I love the vibe of playing live. Once the live show gets going, it’s so strong. That’s why I’m really pushing to come and do the full, proper live show in America. I know in America they’re going to love it because they’re used to seeing live shows, which is not so much the case in France.

DJ Times: How do you feel about this shift in your career from Laurent Garnier the DJ to Laurent Garnier the producer and musician?

Garnier: It’s a very different vibe. When you’re DJing, first of all, you have a relationship with the people and you can change the mood very easily. Once you get the crowd, you can shock them, you can push them, you can give them many different things. It’s very free. When you’re playing live, you’re playing your own music, so the story is very different. One story is a very personal story, which I’m telling them in an hour and a half. The other story represents my life, but it’s more empowering to play live.