Laurent Garnier: Off the Record

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source: Laurent Garnier: Off the Record

I was looking forward to seeing some a biopic of LG having been a fan since the early days of techno but... despite interesting appearances by well known DJs (Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin etc.) this is generally a self congratulatory w@nkfest with no real structure, story or anything engaging about a truly talented artist. He seems like a nice guy but so what? Don't waste your time watching this trash. What a shame as there are very few documentaries about techno.

This one focuses in on celebrated French DJ, Laurent Garnier. It looks at his inroad into the world of electronica, his influences and current direction. There is also some nice contextual info on the history of techno. Its maybe not the most focused of docs and is perhaps a bit scattershot in its overall effect but its an entertaining one nevertheless, with unsurprisingly a cool soundtrack. For fans of electronic music, it offers a fun 90 minutes and a few interesting titbits.

This has been quite some time in coming. This documentary was obviously mainly filmed pre-covid so this may be a difficult watch if you are in any way pining for the dancefloor, filled with people close enough to touch. It seems a very long time ago that clubbing as it was ever happened, the question is will it ever return? This is a fairly straight forward documentary about one of the pioneers of not just techno but dance music, as well as being one of the worlds best DJ's ever. While the current trend in techno is the female model/ex-model/could be a model Instagram influencer, real techno fans know where the real talent is. And unfortunately for the social media platforms, these are basically 50 years plus men with greying hair (or bald). The point is their looks aren't their selling point. Unlike many music documentaries this is highly engaging and will be for people who have no idea who LG is. This isn't just fan service. What is striking about this documentary is the obsessive love of music that this man has, it is also what he went through in order to fulfil his career as a DJ, producer and event planner. There are many high profile DJs but its very unlikely they will have a history that compares. His emotion when he plays as well as that of crowd is captured perfectly. This is also essential viewing for anyone interested in the history of dance music who isn't from France, simply because the UK and US stories of dance music tend to over shadow the French story. It needed to be told. This has very high production values, however there are one or two issues I would raise with. First is that the Blessed Madonna who appears was previously named the Black Madonna and was forced into a name change for obvious reasons. The late-ish release of this documentary should have meant the credits reflected this name change. The other aspect is the argument for dance music to be political. I disagree. The fact is that dance music blew away the politics from clubs, certainly in the UK. So the argument made that it should be political tends to come from people who didn't experience political or other types of violence in nightlife (ie the young), which dance music eradicated. The other issue is that the people who make this argument tend to be left wing, they want to mobilise dance music fans into their causes. Which is what happened when the right tried to take over the skinhead movement in the UK. It leads to nothing but conflict, the thing is once you make it political, the politicians turn up and both sides turn up. You cant/wont have a left wing without a right. We are seeing this already across Europe and its leading to the closing of events. So its a great documentary but one of the messages is definitely questionable, keep politics out of dance music!

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Laurent Garnier: Off the Record