i went down the justice league this past saturday to check out laurent garnier's live set. he hadn't played in sf in over three years, and i'd been kicking myself for missing him the last time. i still wish that he'd come out here to play one of his legendary marathon dj sets, but a live gig is exciting nonetheless.
spundae productions chose to throw this event at the justice league...to my mind, a somewhat questionable decision. garnier's music is BIG anthemic love parade techno, and the sound system at the jl simply is not up to the task of reproducing it - the thing just has no "oomph." i'm not sure what else would have been available that night anyway - 1015 was hosting josh wink. another problem is that the jl becomes very uncomfortable when crowded, and garnier got a very big turnout. i have never been shoved so many times in one night. all that aside, however, he put on a fantastic performance with a fairly minimal stage setup. garnier stayed stage-left behind a flat panel display, some sort of sequencer/sampler combo, and a mixing board. the sax player was front and center, and a keyboard player stood stage right. as far as i could tell, everything was done live a la the advent - garnier sequenced the music with mute/unmute and directed the backup musicians with hand signals. no dat tapes here! the only triggered part of the performance was the video backdrop tha seemed keyed to certain parts of the performance. garnier warmed up with mellower material, working in an electro version of "greed" and a beautiful montage of "acid eiffel" and "the man with the red face." after a very enthusiastic response from a crowd that was probably about half european (including a six foot eight fellow that danced around the entire night wrapped in a huge french flag), garnier declared "we're going to get a big harder now." i'm not going to bother to describe this stuff, you just have to see and hear for yourself. all i can say is that its amazing what techno can do when it has a BASSLINE. the energy of the crowd and the band was in top form...what struck me immediately was the coordination between the live musicians and the electronic elements controlled by garnier. the crowd showered garnier and his band with love and we were treated to not one but TWO very long encores. as garnier put it, "it took me three years to come back to san francisco. now i remember why i came." here's to garnier's return sooner rather than later. -e
