Laurent Garnier (born February 1, 1966) is a French techno music producer and DJ. A former staffer at the embassy in London, Frenchman Laurent Garnier began DJ-ing in Manchester during the late 1980s. By the following decade, he had a broad stylistic range, able to span classic deep house and Detroit techno, the harder side of acid/trance and jazzy tracks as well. He added production work to his schedule in the early 1990s and recorded several LPs. One of the first Europeans to begin mixing American house music in Britain, Garnier was one of the prime cogs in the late-1980s Madchester scene. His DJing at Manchester's Haçienda club provided an inspiration for The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays to begin adding house rhythms to rock music.
Garnier shifted his attention back to France in the early 1990s, running the Wake Up club in Paris for three years and gradually moving into recording as well. For the FNAC label, Garnier released "French Connection" and the Bout de Souffle EP; after the label went under, though, he formed the F Communications label with Eric Morand (a friend who had also worked for FNAC). His first LP, Shot in the Dark, came in 1995. His second, 30, appeared in 1997 and included one of Garnier's best selling singles, "Crispy Bacon". 30 was followed by the retrospective Early Works. After trotting the globe with multiple DJ appearances during the late 1990s, Garnier returned to the production realm with Unreasonable Behaviour, released in early 2000, which features one of Garnier's best known songs, "The Man with the Red Face". Garnier released an EP in 2002 and his latest full length album, The Cloud Making Machine, in 2005. His most recent album is Retrospective, a best-of which collects both his original work and remixes, including some vinyl-only or previously-unreleased tracks. Garnier has also collaborated with System 7.
