Laurent Garnier – Shot In The Dark – F Communications Records 1994
With the release of Laurent Garnier’s new album 33 Tours Et Puis S’en Vont on COD3 QR this month, it’s the perfect opportunity to revisit French techno’s big bang moment.
Long before Daft Punk donned their helmets and Gallic muppets like David Guetta and Flat Eric were synchronised to the beat, before the future disco of Vitalic or le jazz nouveau of St. Germain, there was only Laurent Garnier. (Ok ok, fine and Jean Michele Jarre also.)
Garnier, alongside Eric Morand, founded the label F Communications label in 1994 as a place to incubate French talent.
One of the label’s first releases was Garnier’s own debut album which he named Shot In The Dark, having rejected earlier working titles such as Chancing My Arm, Hail Mary Pass and Fuck It Let’s Just Release It Anyway.
As debut album titles go, it’s certainly an honest one. Shot In The Dark is a younger, slightly greener Laurent Garnier working with limited equipment while wearing his musical influences on his sleeve.
On it you’ll find the futurism of Detroit, the dirty grooves of Chicago and the jangly metallic dub sounds of Berlin. You’ll also find the emergent playful funk of French house, way before anyone else was doing it.
I’d love to know more about the production of this album and the synths and equipment he used. It’s lacking oomph in some places, but at the same time has its own unique flavour.
Nothing before or since sounds quite like it. And though it sounds slightly dated now, the album still holds a very special place in my heart.
It’s also well worth a listen for fans looking to understand the origins of Garnier’s sound and gain a deeper appreciation of how it has developed over the decades.
It’s often quite raw and lacks a rich sound pallet, but you can still hear the protean melodic flourishes which would eventually crystalise in later works, most notably his latest album 33 Tours Et Puis S’en Vont.
Calling The Shots
The opening track, Shapes Under Water, is a dense and swirly techno track drenched in frothy flange effects. It begins with a swelling string chord progression which plays throughout before the driving bassline and 909 drums kick in.
Astral Dreams (Speakers Mix) remains one of my fav tracks of all time and the only one from this album that I’ve played in sets.
As is the way with pretty much all Garnier tracks, it starts off understated to begin, then a cheeky little melody comes in which can best be described as, well, French.
Also, barely perceptible at the start, there’s a weird scratchy noise which sounds like it’s only there to add a little character until the filter is opened full and holy shit, is that a 303 what the hell is that?
Astral Dreams is less an earworm, than it is a Ceti eel gnawing inside your eardrums. Remember those little things crawly from the Wrath of Khan? Imagine one of those nibbling away at your nerves but with an out-RAYgeous French accent.
In other words, it’s very much a marmite track, driving half the dancefloor into the frenzy, while the other half runs off screaming to the exit with severe tinnitus.
A few years after this album came out I also bought a limited edition yellow vinyl version from a friend of a friend. This vinyl version doesn’t have Astral Dream on it which is quite annoying and instead it has another track called Oral Sex.
Now here’s a phrase I never thought I’d say but here goes… I’m not a fan of Oral Sex. It’s a fairly straightforward deep house type track loaded full of cheesy porn samples. It’s not that I’m a prude, far from it, it’s just that she sounds like she’s faking it – trust me I can tell. And I find Astral Dreams far more orgasmic. So this paragraph’s really more of a note-to-self to grab a copy of the EP off Discogs. Anyways, moving on…
Bouncing metal sounds like it should, with some metallic noises and plenty of bounce. It builds slowly until some gorgeous strings come in, again here’s evidence of the signature Garnier sound still in early development.
Rising Spirit, ironically, sounds more like bouncing metal than Bouncing Metal because of this weird springy sound that plays throughout (gwan, have a listen and tell me it doesn’t), so I always thought this one was called bouncing metal instead. I wonder am I the only one?
Anyways, it’s a gradually swelling ambient piece that’s pure Garnier. Once again, those sublime strings. Once again that magic ability to weave melodies and then knit them together in often unexpected ways at just the right moment. Once again, that aha moment when it clicks and you realise this was how the melody was always meant to go, but the journey is just as important as the destination.
Harmonic groove is a minimal techno track, albeit with that same quirky personality in evidence, while The Force is pure Chi-town house with a raw bassline and Darth Vader vocals.
As a teenager I thought this tune was the bantha’s bollocks but as an adult not so much. But note again that same signature string sound towards the end that we hear throughout the album.
Geometric World is one of the more aggressive and dissonant tracks on the album. It’s fast, minimalistic trippy techno track for dark sweaty dancefloors so in theory I should be all over this one but it’s always been the track I liked the least off this album.
022 is a sweet melodic piece of shimmering future techno, again the quirky melodic noises, again the use of those same synth string sounds over the top to add depth. This is another track that feels like a nod to the gleaming futurism of early Detroit techno, but infused with Garnier’s personality throughout.
Rex Attitude is, like many tracks on this album, inspired by some of Garnier’s favourite clubs around the world, in this case the Rex Club in Paris.
It’s one of the better techno tracks on the album, pure classic 90s minimalism full of kinetic high hat patterns and aural origami dub techno stabs reminiscent of Dave Clarke’s Red 2, but once again with that typically Gallic groove.
Raw Cut is, as its name suggests, is fairly raw consisting of a sparce and steady 909, a low gurgling bass and percussive effects until halfway mark when a soft pad chord progression emerges to add depth and breadth to the track.
Track For Mike is, once again, pure Detroit, making me wonder if the Mike in question is Mad Mike Banks. It definitely has that UR deep electro vibe going on with those distinctive-sounding synth-strings lending the piece an added layer of foreboding.
Track For Mike is either the last or penultimate track on the album, depending on the version you get. My first copy of this album was actually the cassette version, so the final track for me was Silver String, a short and chirpy little tune with a funky bassline and – no surprises for guessing – that signature string sound once more.
Now maybe it’s my personal bias, but I think it’s actually a much more upbeat track to finish the album on instead of Track For Mike, so I’m putting it here instead. (It’s my blog so I can do what I like.)
Slightly Off Target
It’s hard for me to be objective about this album because I bought it when I was a teenager. I put it in my Walkman, pressed play, loved it instantly and listened to it relentlessly even though the general consensus at the time was, “it’s good, but not great”.
That it doesn’t hold up so well today is down to the passage of time, the limitations of the equipment used and the fact that Garnier had only just embarked on his production journey.
The continuation of that journey, however, brought us classics like Crispy Bacon and the Man With The Red Face, as Garnier continued to develop and refine his sound.
Garnier may be the venerable statesmen of techno today but Shot In The Dark is a glimpse into the mind of a young artist still finding his feet.
Frankly I find it inspiring to explore the earliest works of artists I admire, back when they were still finding their way and developing their craft, you can learn a lot, I’ve realised. Even the legends have to start somewhere.
True, there are some who seem to do their best works early in life (Liam Howlett and Richard D James immediately spring to mind) only to have that brilliance gradually fade over time.
But for the most of us less prodigious types, experience, tenacity and years of practice is what makes us better.
Shot In The Dark is certainly an interesting vintage, but much like French wine, Laurent Garnier’s productions definitely continue to improve with age.