A new biographical book on Laurent Garnier has just been released in France. Written by philosopher and essayist Mathilde Ramadier, "Garnier" looks at how a music-obsessed kid became one of the defining figures of European electronic music.
Long before the clubs, Garnier was already building his own world around music. As a teenager, he turned his bedroom into a miniature discotheque, spent hours listening to records and even began mixing on free radio in the early '80s.
His path into dance music was anything but obvious. After hotel school, Garnier moved to London and worked as a valet at the French ambassador's residence, serving guests including Jacques Chirac, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana.
Everything changed after he moved to Manchester. At the Hacienda, Garnier heard house music in a club for the first time and became obsessed. He later described hearing Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around" there as a life-changing moment.
He started handing out homemade mixtapes around Manchester and eventually landed a residency at the Hacienda under the name DJ Pedro in 1987, putting him inside one of the most important clubs in the birth of the UK acid-house era.
After returning to France, Garnier helped build the country's emerging electronic scene and in 1994 co-founded F Communications with Eric Morand, a label that became central to the rise of French techno and electronic music.
What makes Garnier's story bigger than one DJ career is his role in taking electronic music from a marginalized underground culture into the French mainstream, while continuing to defend clubbing as something collective, political and culturally important. That idea sits at the heart of Ramadier's book.
Ramadier is not new to his story. She previously co-created the 2013 graphic novel "Reves syncopes," inspired by Garnier, and says the new book grew out of hours of conversations with him and her own long relationship with techno culture.
Released August 21, "Garnier" is 160 pages and part biography, part manifesto for dancing, nightlife and the culture Garnier has spent nearly four decades defending. A Paris launch with Garnier and Ramadier is scheduled for September 10.
