Laurent Garnier

Laurent Garnier was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, and discovered clubbing as a teenager in Paris with his older brother. In 1984 he took a job as a waiter at the French Embassy in London, and by 1986 had moved to Manchester, where he discovered the Haçienda club the following year and began DJing there under the name DJ Pedro as Chicago house and Detroit techno took hold. His sets at the Haçienda helped inspire bands like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays to bring house rhythms into their rock music.

After returning to France for mandatory military service in 1988, Garnier ran the Wake Up Club in Paris and released his first records on the FNAC label before co-founding F Communications with Eric Morand in the mid-1990s. His 1997 album 30, featuring tracks like "Crispy Bacon" and "Flashback," became one of the defining records of European techno, and he followed it with Unreasonable Behaviour in 2000.

He's continued to record and tour widely since, moving into jazz, dub, and soundtrack work on albums including The Cloud Making Machine and Tales of a Kleptomaniac, and released 33 Tours et Puis S'en Vont, his most dancefloor-oriented album in years, in 2023.