History is very important. The reason why is simple - to appreciate the future, and for that matter, to evaluate the present one must know the past. In dance music it is all too easy to lose yourself in the hedonistic rush of 180bpms and strange warbling synth sounds. Where is the history? As a DJ I know well the DJ phobia associated with playing anything more than two weeks old, and we are talking unreleased promo copies. DJs have this fear of the past, their records are commodified fetishised portions of the future - a world where old is equivalent to bad. So how does the average punter learn of the roots of the sounds they are hearing now? Of techno’s roots in Detroit acid, Chicago house, disco, European industrial, punk and progressive rock?

French DJ, producer, label owner and techno extraordinaire, Laurent Garnier spoke to me about the past, the future, and himself.

Laurent Garnier knows well the importance of history. During his recent tour he began his Melbourne set with Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, stunning the crowd - "they had heard hard techno all night and they loved it". Amongst his favourite tracks of all-time, tracks he still manages to play, he includes Sid Vicious’ version of My Way, War’s Country City Country, as well as the seminal Rhythm is Rhythm track, Strings Of Life. He views his job as a DJ as being one of "educating and entertaining the crowd" and has one of world’s most diverse record collections with which to do this - from electro to garage, hip hop to deep house, acid and hard trance - "I’ve always been very open-minded".

 For a while he was running a dance division of French record giant, FNAC, which he has now left with business partner Eric Morland. During his time at FNAC he introduced a whole range of quality French dance music from the manic hard trance of Lunatic Asylum to the garage of St Germain. Citing reasons of "lack of freedom" and a slavery to "the big business" of FNAC, he has moved on to establish his own label, F Communications. The philosophy of F is "we’ll release anything that is very underground or that really appeals to us" and so far this has meant Dune (Garnier and German DJ Pascal FEOS), Juan Trip, D.S., the hard trance of Aurora Borealis. Now he has just released his own album, titled Shot In The Dark, a blend of minimalist Detroit house and acid trance with a bit of ambience thrown in. Diversity is the key to any good society and the same applies to dance music. Both in the operation of the label, and his own work as producer, writer and DJ, Laurent values diversity very highly. "I’m sick to death of people who say ‘I’m a techno DJ’ or ‘I’m a garage DJ’, ‘I only play over 160bpm" and the like. For fuck sake, go home and open your mind - I get really frustrated by narrow minded people". "Its the same in the classical music world and the rock scene. Everybody tries to specialise and its a real shame". As the whole house movement has exploded and itself diversified into a thousand an one styles, specialisation has become the key for many DJs. Reared on a diet of style-specific music the crowds, too, have become specialised, something that Laurent laments. "When I began at the Hacienda [in Manchester] I was mixing cha cha, garage, house to dub and ragga. I can’t do it anymore because the crowds are so specialised too now. I still do it on New Years Eve [at the foam filled Mad Club in Switzerland] because I’m too fucked up and the crowd knows it [he has done NYE at Mad for the last four years]. When I’m in Melbourne this year I won’t be able to do it because it will just annoy the crowd. I have to respect the crowd because they will only get to see me once".

 As the constant beats of techno have progressed the sound has become more electronic and White. Especially in Europe where Gabber and trance purvey vistas of alien lands, and apocalyptic nightmares - dreams of a White unreality. "America’s got no techno scene, its all garage. Whilst its true that the hardcore house or techno, if you prefer, is White, most of the producers of beautiful hard house stuff in the States are Black, Mad Mike [of Underground Resistance] is as Black as fuck. Black is funky. Its music you can wiggle your bum too . . . Its all house. Even Luke Slater’s hard-as-fuck stuff has a house groove to it, same with the Underground Resistance stuff. A lot of people play too much White music, so I’ll play some really Black breakbeats and some old big electro stuff like Mantronix and the like".

 As for the industrial Gabber, Laurent has a revealing story. "When I was running a record shop [some years ago] these kids would come in and say ‘have you got anything as hard as fuck, Gabber stuff?’. They get the same rush from it as Iron Maiden and heavy metal, they certainly didn’t listen to James Brown. I mean Lenny Dee was playing before a heavy metal band touring the States. In some ways its good because these metal kids will all be into the dance underground without even knowing it. I can only really enjoy Lenny Dee - he’s the ultimate hardcore DJ - and whilst I can’t shake my ass to it I can jump up and down. After an hour or so Lenny knows I get bored with it and switch off so it cool. I meant if you shake your ass to it you’ll dislocate your back and end up in a wheelchair". Dangerous stuff, hardcore. Heavy metal has always been a White and predominantly male concern - anger at not being as legitimately dispossessed as youth of colour, flirtations with a occult culture suppressed in Western Judeo-Christian society - metal is a very Western phenomenon. As for gabber, the gangsta samples appeal to White youth for similar reasons - but is the alienation as real? Interesting, too, is the fact that Laurent Garnier and F Communications’ Australian distributor, Shock Records, is also the biggest distributor of death metal too.

 Where is it all going? Will house, techno and the rest all be swallowed into the great pit of commercial popular culture? Have DJs been playing too many happy melodic anthems with structures similar to traditional pop and rock? Has it just become the new pop? If it is, it is only a matter of time before the big music industry swallows the underground culture and sells it back to us as a poor imitation. Laurent is worried, too. Unpredictability affects the small independent labels in a much greater way than the big companies with lots of resources and diversified interests. "I can’t predict the way its moving. I mean who would have guessed that the hard gabber shit would be the big thing in Europe, or that breakbeat with chipmunk samples would be so huge in England . . . [but on the other hand] when Sven Vath and Carl Cox sell in numbers of 100,000 the record companies are going to jump the underground. Until then they are cashing in with commercial techno and people are buying it [and DJs are playing it]. The underground will sell out because the lure of dollars to prop up your label that just manages to exist from 12" to 12" is just to great. Vinyl is dying and once we move to CDs we will have to sell ourselves to the majors. Thankfully we have a network in Europe and the States amongst all the DJs where we talk about our experiences with various labels and tours and advise each others . . . so if I have a bad time in Sydney, everyone else is going to be warned"

 With such a small population, Australia really does have a flourishing techno and house scene although it is not always that evident. For every ten imported anthems, you are lucky to find half a decent local track. Is it that the Australian music industry has been too reared on rock and pop to be able to produce anything other than melodic handbag house, read pop house? Are we producing our own distinct styles or are we merely copying the latest trends from Germany and the UK? "I am amazed that you in Australia have only one vinyl pressing plant for the whole of the country . . . I have heard some great Australian stuff despite this, though, especially from Adelaide’s Juice Records, and Melbourne’s PsyHarmonics". With Laurent Garnier supporting these labels, they have ben particularly successful throughout Europe - Juice releases regularly appearing on Laurent’s top twenty tracks. There is hope for the local scene, yet. We need a bit of a history lesson and a healthy dose of experimentalism and diversity

Yellow Peril 1993.

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