`....Laurent Garnier....Part #2`

SOMEWHERE between Saturday night and Sunday morning and Laurent's spinning at a Dutch afterhours club called Exposure. And some of us, at least, are grateful that he's so good we can rush on nothing but the music. Laurent plays the uplifting soulful house of Joe Smooth's 'Promised Land' and everyone screams with joy. He plays the metallic thunder of Dave Clarke's 'Red 2' and from the first hardcore riffs everyone wails in pleasure.
Girls sport impossibly long legs and impossibly short shorts. The boys look like dancers from Madonna's videos. Two girls wearing underwear as clubwear jiggle on a podium. They spot a photographer and slowly curl their mini-skirts up to their waists. There's some cabaret going down and two girls dressed as schoolteachers slowly rip each other's clothes off. And like the best parties this one never stops.
At around 6am everyone heads to another, even larger venue where Laurent kicks off again. And because this is Holland they sell ready rolled spliffs behind the bar while some lunatic Dutchman clutches a plastic duck and lifts it high above the dancefloor.
"They were a kitsch crowd man," says Garnier later. "I thought they'd want some disco, but I gave it to them hard, fucking hard, and they took it."

IN 1993 Laurent made his first great record. Titled 'Acid Eiffel' it was a collaboration between himself and French artists Shazz and Ludovic Navarre. If you haven't heard it then imagine an acid track that utilises sensual garage rhythms and the heart-tugging strings of ambience. Released on the French label FNAC, 'Acid Eiffel's fusion of house and techno typified the genre-busting chic of the label.
Then again tunes on FNAC always seemed to be somewhere inbetween everyone else's extremes. These were records that had the funk of deep house patterns and dreamy, jazzual melodies but also kept a trippy, psychedelic edge. Run by Eric Morand FNAC was shaping up as a leading underground dance label before it dissolved last year, separating from the parent company that funded and backed it.
Now there's a new label, F Communications, with Morand and Garnier working together to A&R and run the show. They're still working with many of the FNAC artists, people like Shazz and Navarre as well as developing new talents like the technoid maverick Juan Trip. But right now the main event on F is Laurent's debut LP 'A Shot In The Dark'.
"Every single track on it corresponds to a different time of the night or to a different time of my life," explains Laurent, "it's a very personal thing." And each track pays tribute to different arms of the house underground nodding respect towards Maurizio, Red Planet, Kevin Saunderson, Armando and Robert Hood. Which in non-trainspotter language means a record that flies across minimal techno, pulsing sensual deepness and groovy trance with sub-bass, sweet strings, soft kickdrums and hardcore 4am funk.
"I didn't invent anything I'm doing on the album," says a modest Laurent. "I just made music I believed in and music I'd liked for years. I just wanted to see if I could do it myself. All the other records I'd made before had been with somebody in the studio helping me or collaborating. Now I can say that nobody helped me, nobody mixed anything for me."

AND then there's the track he can't release. Titled 'Aural Sex' it combines porno-vocals with deep grooves and was created by Laurent for his gay audience. Sadly he couldn't get the samples cleared but assures me that he's got some more vinyl sex to release in the near future. And where will hel get the vocals from?
"I go and buy sex videos."
Don't you get embarrassed doing that?
"Not at all. I quite like sex films actually. I don't even mind walking the streets with a sex film. Everybody enjoys a good bonk. Don't be so English. A fuck is a fuck and a dick is a dick."
And while he talks about porn he drives a car that's knocked up 46,000 kilometres in just six months. It's classic DJ stuff: live half your life in a club and the rest on the road. As we drive and get increasingly lost (almost driving into a canal) in a wet and foggy Dutch morning, Laurent explains how driving influenced the title of his LP.
"I'm in my car with Eric and you know when there's a lot of rain and stuff and you're trying to overtake a lorry? And it's like, 'Oh fuck.' I suddenly turn to Eric and say, 'This one is a shot in the dark. Let's go for it.' It's just an image saying you really don't know where you're going."
A bit like living in the house and techno scene.
"It's true," says Laurent, "it's like this LP and the new label. We don't know where the fuck we are going. We're just doing it. It's like a complete shot in the dark and as long as we believe in what we're doing we just keep going."
And what Laurent believes in is a form of house music that's as diverse as the contents of his box. A house music that understands its connections to disco and hi-NRG but isn't scared of moving forward. Unlike England where techno and rave were made unfashionable, forcing the hip into handbag, Laurent connects with a European tradition - and in Europe they still rave. Even the babes. And they still like it hard.
But Laurent knows something that even his Euro contemporaries like Sven Vath and Mark Spoon don't seem to understand, he has a root in the gay clubs he used to play and in the glorious spirit of England's Hacienda in its halcyon days. When he DJs, sometimes, like on `Acid Eiffel', when he produces, he fuses the lot.
"I just try to do what I believe in," offers Laurent. Then he puts his foot down and accelerates into the fog. And we're somewhere in Northern Europe but we're utterly and totally lost.