Laurent Garnier – 33 Tours Et Puis S’en Vont – Cod3QR Records [Digital Version]
In my personal pantheon of DJs you will find two distinct categories, technical wizards and expert selectors.
Top of the technical wizards for me is Jeff Mills, a man who can field strip an SL1210 blindfolded in under 14 seconds before performing a perfect needle drop on the beat at 155bpm.
Laurent Garnier is the maestro selector. No Beatport top ten tracks, no one-hour festival fillers, every single set he performs is an epic voyage where 90% of the tunes he plays you’ll never hear played by anyone else.
Course he’s nowhere near Detroit-level when it comes to turntable skills. I’ve seen him fuck up mixes multiple times then shrug them off as only a Frenchman can. Yet I’ve also witnessed him beatmatch a sunrise down to the last photon.
Conjuring rich melodies at the precise instant those first golden fronds of light emerge, wending their way across a sea of blissful dancers as they emerge from their trance, blinking and bleary, raising their limbs aloft before the bass comes hurtling towards them once more and they explode in frenzied abandon.
Every DJ holds cherished memories of when they caught that perfect wave, dropping that tune at exactly the right moment before basking in the collective rapture of the crowd, swelling up not just with pride, but with the sheer elation that only comes from making large groups of people experience true escapism.
And that’s always been Garnier’s true skill. It’s not about how he mixes the music, but how he weaves together those unforgettable moments. He exists in that perfect nexus of spiritual and temporal harmony and has done consistently from the days of the Hacienda.
Those perfect never-to-be-repeated moments that other DJs spend their whole lives chasing – just another day in the office for Monsieur Garnier.
Any wonder he’s decided to take some time away from touring. Giving it all while living on that temporal knife edge, week in week out, for decades must be exhausting.
Maybe that’s why he spends so much time mixing with his eyes closed.
Ces Moments Parfaits
Laurent Garnier represents dance music at its most introspective and spiritual and Tours Et Puis S’en Vont is an emotional tour de force quite unlike anything else I’ve heard this year.
It’s not a happy album, but that’s a good thing. Because far too much of dance music, particularly the more melodic or progressive stuff, tends to focus on the uplifting and the euphoric at the expense of depth and authenticity.
But sometimes the best moments on the dancefloor are those bittersweet ones, the ones where you go inside yourself, moving to the beat while becoming lost in a melody.
Your mind is swirling, your heart is racing, your chest is heaving, it all seems so much, the emotion, the intensity…
And then the melody pivots slightly, something new is introduced which puts all the previous notes into a whole new context, it’s like when your mind has been brooding over something and suddenly, you find the solution and the result is pure fulfilment.
An earned sense of satisfaction, rather than instant gratification.
It’s an effect no amount of drops, buildups and snare rushes can ever hope to achieve and few producers have mastered – it’s also the underlying theme at the heart of this album.
Since my French is proper merde, I put the title into Google Translate and discovered something interesting, “33 Tours Et Puis S’en Vont” translates as “LP and then go”.
But without the 33, “Tours Et Puis S’en Vont” translates as Turns And Then Goes Away.
And that’s a musical philosophy that seems to underpin this album – a series of unexpected turning points.
All the tracks on this album follow a distinct pattern, they build up gradually, introducing each element in a deliberate and unrushed fashion, allowing you to familiarise yourself with them.
But then around two thirds of the way through, just as you think you know what’s happening, the ribbons get pulled on a bonne surprise and as these new symphonic revelations unravel, even on repeat listens, it never fails to give you a warm glow.
I’ve since realised it’s something Garnier’s been striving for ever since his first album, Shot In The Dark. His 1994 debut was an album made by a young artist still finding his feet, whereas this is a mature artist in his stride, the sound of a man who has long-since perfected his art.
The result is pure sweat-drenched machine music for the dancefloor that’s also dripping with soul.
Tales From The Real World, the opening track, is a perfect example. It’s deep and melancholic and yet strangely exhilarating – over 11 minutes of pure eyes closed dancefloor introspection.
It eases itself in nice and gentle, with icy pads and dubby flourishes before little a little sizzling synth arpeggio is introduced, it’s got a slight aroma of Crispy Bacon, but by the time it registers, you’re already drawn to the emerging melodies coming in from the rear.
Once all the sonic elements have assembled the track begins in earnest. And then it just builds and builds and builds… growing in size and scope, flooding your mind…
Liebe Grüße Aus Cucuron does the exact same thing. It starts off unassuming, some light melodic flourishes, a steady metronomic 909 and a repetitive bassline then at the midpoint takes a turn you won’t see coming.
Seriously, I’m beginning to think Laurent Garnier is to techno what Alfred Hitchcock was to movies – the master of suspense.
Reviens La Nuit begins with slow smouldering intensity before gathering momentum. A Bladerunner-style arpeggio is introduced first, punctuated by layer after layer of twisting, intertwining synth melodies and siren-like effects. Disparate at first, they gradually gel together until the skies rupture and a massive fleet of UFOs emerge overhead – if you ever wondered what it would feel like to be rushing your tits off for 14 whole minutes during an alien invasion, wonder no longer.
On the REcorD (part 3) is another moody masterpiece, again allowing the various sounds to establish themselves before gradually weaving them together to take the final shape, layering the intensity… I know I’m repeating myself here but there’s a very clear formula here and it obviously works.
Well maybe not all of the tracks. Saturn Drive Triplex doesn’t work, at least not for me, but that’s more to do with the vocals than the track which I’m not too keen on.
Closer To You, again pretty deep and moody but doesn’t move me as some of the previous tracks, while Sake Stars Fever is a far cheerier tune that’s definitely got a distinct Garnier vibe.
Cinq o clock in le Matin, as its name suggests, is a perfect pre-sunrise tune, slow and brooding in its delivery to begin with but wow, just listen how this one grows in creeping intensity over its eight-plus minutes runtime.
Melodies meander their way in and out, growing more prominent for a while before shrinking into the background once more. It’s yet another track that’s got lots of moving parts that converge together in interesting ways, it’s all about that culmination of ideas.
In Your Phase is a paranoid banger with French rapping over the top but the effect is somewhat lost on me since I can maybe understand one word in ten.
Pretty sure he mentions something about whiskey at some point and there’s police sirens constantly throughout. So, no idea what’s going on, but there’s whiskey involved and the cops are on their way, so instinct’s telling me it’s time to get the fuck out le dodge.
Give Me Some Sulfites – this one wow – I’m pretty sure I first heard this one when Garnier played the final sunrise set at a festival just outside Malaga back in 2019.
As with Reviens La Nuit, it has a distinctly cinematic Vangelis vibe about it. And when those strings come in – uff!
Au Clair De Ta Lune, a steady stomper with a kinetic bassline and soft atmospheric pads again it just builds and writhes along for over 11 minutes, catching you up in its current and whisking you away.
The final track (at least on the version I have here) is Granulator Bordelum, a bouncier more playful track full of funky noodly synths that serves to lighten things a little, but not too much, the eerie pads and spaced-out effects loom overheard, flaring up every so often just to make sure things stay weird.
That Was Intense…
Watching Garnier mix is part of the magic, especially the face he pulls as he blends tracks together, looking like he’s about sneeze, ejaculate and achieve total enlightenment all at the same time.
Who knows, perhaps he is.
While other DJs mix tracks together, fading one into the next while obsessively twiddling EQ pots to make themselves look busy, Garnier just stands there.
One the one hand, he appears like he’s on always on the verge of being overwhelmed by the music, but at the same time he’s completely cool, calm and in control.
That’s when you realise the mixing deck is ancillary and Garnier is the true conduit, braiding beats and melodies together, amplifying emotions, channelling hundreds of thousands of watts of power directly through his body before unleashing them through the speakers…
As a DJ, Laurent Garnier has long-since attained total mastery of his craft. His studio career started later and took longer to solidify.
Although he’s given us plenty of timeless bangers along the way, these now seem like mere practice sessions compared with this dazzling collection of deep and evocative music.
Music that serves to remind us all just how thoughtful and emotionally satisfying techno can be.
33 Tours Et Puis S’en Vont represents a new peak for Laurent Garnier. He’s no longer a DJ who’s also a producer, he’s transcended that designation and can instead be considered an accomplished composer whose medium just happens to be the dancefloor.
Vive la intensité!