Before he left France for Manchester in the mid '80s to chase his dream of becoming a DJ, Laurent Garnier went to catering school. He came from a family of caterers and fairground workers, and his path was basically decided for him—until it wasn't. In Manchester, just before the dawn of the Second Summer of Love, he would learn that DJing was more about feel than genre or beatmatching. He even played at The Haçienda, one of the UK's most hallowed halls.

Then mandatory military service brought Garnier back to France, and back to reality. Still, he kept on, helping jump-start the clubbing scene in Paris and putting spots like Rex Club on the international dance music circuit. He's a world-renowned DJ who still plays the best clubs and festivals decades after he began, and he's responsible for several of techno's most enduring anthems, including "The Man With The Red Face" and "Crispy Bacon." These long, creative tracks still sound boundary pushing today.

Then, in 2020, Garnier suddenly couldn't DJ anymore (along with everyone else). Almost instantly he reverted back to what he knew and took a job in a friend's Japanese restaurant, learning new dishes and techniques as he prepared takeout orders for the masked masses. He threw himself back into cooking food like he never left—even today, he'll go and help out if he's got a weekend off. It paints the picture of a man who, even after 33 years of DJing, can never really rest.

Garnier also spent the pandemic making the longest—and perhaps best—album of his career. 33 Tours Et Puis S'en Vont is both a victory lap and a signpost for a new era, capturing everything that makes him so revered: his wandering mind, his wide-ranging influences, the incredible musicianship that he denies he actually has. Garnier writes epics, not tools, and his new album has some of his most potent work yet.

Cooking, producing—the two hobbies go together. Garnier is a famously voracious consumer of music, listening to new stuff for several hours every single day—you'll see his name on any and every DJ promo you could get your hands on—and he's similarly open-minded and curious about food, a true epicurean as well as an artist. I asked him one question about cooking and we spoke about food for nearly half our interview, which gives you an idea of where his priorities lie. (The most shocking thing I learned? He prefers Spanish wine to French, much to his own shame.)

But as anyone who likes to live large knows, it takes a toll after a while, especially when turning 60 is within sight. Garnier might not be good at stopping, but he is trying to slow down. Though our interview took place in April—before the news broke that he was cancelling summer gigs due to unspecified health issues—he was already planning to scale back his touring to a more manageable, even luxurious, lifestyle. Once a month or so, he'll spend a weekend in a city, play a few gigs, get to know the place instead of jetting in and out like a rock star. Whether in food or music, he likes to soak it all in, savour it and appreciate it for what it is.

At 57, Laurent Garnier is one of dance music's most legendary and enduring figures.

You've been talking a lot recently about the role of the DJ, and maybe stopping touring. What's going on there?

I never said I want to stop. I said I wanted to slow things down. There's a big difference. Slowing down means really going down, but not stopping—DJing is in my DNA. I've been dreaming of being a DJ since I was 12 years old. What I wanted to do as a kid was to make people dance. There's no way I can stop doing that. But I'm approaching my 60s—it's a good time for me to slow down and approach touring very differently. I would do two or three cities on the same weekend, not being able to see very much. We can't lie to ourselves about that. And being a bit older than the average DJ, I do need to go to bed before I DJ, stuff like that. I enjoy cities less than I used to 20 years ago.

I don't really want to start slowing down before the end of 2024. We still have a good year and a half. But the idea after that would be to go to only one city in a weekend and instead of doing 20 weekends a year, just doing eight or ten, or something like that. And then each weekend, I stay in the same city for the whole weekend and do two gigs instead of one—a normal, Laurent Garnier one and then do another one where I play different kinds of music, more eclectic. It could be very well drum & bass or hip-hop or soul, funk, whatever. I will give a bit more to people whenever they can come and see me—put it that way.

I have very devoted fans. Without them I am nothing. So it's just to be able to tell them, "Okay, it's not going to be my last tour, I'm not going to stop tomorrow." But I will have to slow things down. At my age, it's normal. When you think about being a touring DJ, playing in front of a crowd, which is 80 percent kids—they could be my kids! They actually are the same age as my kid. It's a bit strange. It's a bit weird. If I meet anybody who doesn't know me and they ask, "Oh, what do you do for a job?" And I'm like "I'm a DJ." They look at me and say "Excuse me. You do what?"

It's a bit difficult for them to get the idea. So I think it's an appropriate time for me to slow down. There are lots of other ways where I can share music with people, and I can still do my job and play music. I've been running an online radio station for the last 22 years. I can carry on with my label CodeQR, sharing exciting artists and music to people in lots of ways. I'm more than a DJ. I'll carry on, and perhaps one thing will take more space at one point. I'll never stop sharing. That's the core of who I am. You can be old and still share good music.

His latest album, 33 Tours Et Puis S'en Vont, captures everything that makes the French techno veteran so revered: his wandering mind, his wide-ranging influences and incredible musicianship.

What are the other priorities in your life?

My family—my wife, my son—they are my biggest priority of course. Making sure my son is doing well and happy. I like cinema also, I watch a lot of films, but I'm not in the cinema world, because it's a very mean world. And food. I like food. I like cooking a bit, and I like drinking nice wine and that's about it. I'm not a sports guy. I'm sorry.

If I understand correctly, you worked in a kitchen during the pandemic. Is that right?

I was so bored being locked at home that I needed to first, have interaction with people, and second, to do something to give back. A close friend of mine has a restaurant not far from my home. It's all Japanese food, with two Japanese girls cooking. So I asked him if I could come for a couple of days and they could teach me the basics, like the Japanese vinaigrette for the salads, and other little tips I could use at home. He said I should come and cook with them. So I went there and got on with the chefs really well, learned lots of things, and cooked there for nearly two years. I still go there once a month, when I have a weekend off. It's so much fun, and there's so much pleasure that goes into it. That's because of how he runs his restaurant—he's got a lot of friends coming and going.

What stations were you on?

It was everything from gyoza to Thai curries to okonomiyaki, a lot of fried foods. I learned the basics.

Do you think that if you weren't a DJ, you'd work in the food industry?

Maybe more getting involved in something like a listening bar, where we could serve food too. I was in Japan again last month, and we went into a couple of really wonderful listening bars. If I had to do something, a new business, that's what I would do—there will always be music, somehow, somewhere. It doesn't have to be super loud. Just somewhere comfortable, where you can enjoy a nice bottle of wine, nibble a couple of things, without having to dance. I know it's getting more and more fashionable now in big cities. But I live in a really small countryside village. We have already organised a pop/rock festival [Festival Yeah in Lourmarin] every year, which is very successful. We do a lot of events here around music and food and wine. We cater for an older crowd for the festival. We want the experience to be a bit nicer than just a festival where you go with your tent and you camp. We want something a bit more elaborate, because I've passed those years.

I feel like music and food are such an obvious combination, but I'm always interested in meeting music people who are into food. In electronic music and dance music, it's neglected—very few clubs have food, and dance music is rarely considered in the context where food is also involved.

For me it's always been an important part of my life. It's my real job. I did two years of catering school, and then I did seven years of catering before even starting to DJ professionally. My grandmother had a restaurant, my brother had a restaurant, it's always been part of my family. Not Michelin star, but good food, I've always been around it for a long time.

I guess it's why I love Japan. For one, the clubs are amazing. The sound systems are amazing. And the crowd is amazing. But second: the food is fucking amazing. So I would privilege a country like that over somewhere else, because I know that, on top of having good gigs, we're going to eat amazing stuff. I've always been trying to do something with chefs, but most music doesn't go with food. I don't know why. Pop is not very linked with food. Is rock & roll linked with food? More drinking. Everything is linked to drinking. Except things that are already very tied to one place or country, like salsa.

But lots of people in the electronic music world love their food. Richie [Hawtin] has his sake, and I know other DJs who are always posting pictures of their food. Why do I like food so much? For me, it's exactly the same thing as music—it's all about sharing, about spending moments with the people you enjoy. Sometimes when food is amazing, or when a dish is really touching you, you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Just like going to a concert when they're playing a song like you've never heard before, and you will remember it forever. As DJs, we're also giving good, positive vibes to people—we're not helping people, but we satisfy some parts of the body.

"I've been dreaming of being a DJ since I was 12 years old. What I wanted to do as a kid was to make people dance. There's no way I can stop doing that."

OK, we've been talking about food for 20 minutes. You said that you've dreamed of being a DJ since you were a kid. So why did you go to catering school?

I didn't have a choice. My dad is a bit strict. Catering school was the good option. Believe me. So I went to catering school.

So, when it came to music, were you producing or DJing first?

DJing first. I made my first track with a guy in a group called Dream Frequency, who had a hit in the early rave times. I went to his studio, after I had already started DJing. I saw a couple of machines and asked, 'Oh, what does this do? And what does this do?" After that we made music and I bought some equipment. I learned, but I'm not a musician. I was making music with the tools that I had, and the tools that helped me make the music. I consider myself more of someone who passes on music than a musician.

I make music for myself. Once I'm happy with it, I put it out. If people like or dislike it, it doesn't matter—there's so much music out there. I'm not force-feeding anyone. It's just an album. Each album or each EP is a reflection of what's going on in my life at the moment, what I've been listening to. But the key thing is that it's still fun. It's always fun. I'm not a musician because I can't take a guitar or piano and make you cry, which really pisses me off. You might ask me, why didn't I learn? And I'll say that I spent too much time listening to music—for the last 30 years, listening to five or six hours of music every single day. This is the time I could have learned piano. But I'm not a musician—I'm a DJ.

How do you find the time and the mental space to make your own music when you're listening to like, hundreds of records a day by other people?

I don't make that much music. My last album was eight years ago, aside from a record I did with a French psychedelic band. Usually I do a project, work on it for two months or so, then mix it down. Then I switch my machines off for about three years. I need time to digest. In the big picture, I don't make that much music, I'm very focused, and when I'm working on music, I don't listen to a lot of other stuff. And then after I go back to feeding myself with tons of music. My career has been ten percent producing, 90 percent listening to music for DJing. Basically I'm a workaholic.

"But I'm approaching my 60s—it's a good time for me to slow down and approach touring very differently."

What inspired you to make this long, epic album after eight years of not making any music?

I didn't mean to start on an album. Covid-19 arrives, everything stops for everyone. My first reaction was some kind of a complete rejection of techno, because I've been following techno for 30, 35 years, and for me it's always been the music of tomorrow. There's a tunnel and in techno is the light—it always goes towards the light. Then the light switched off because from one day to the other, after they said you can't leave your home. People were dying all around the world and hadn't a fucking clue if we were going to get out of it, or if we were heading towards something really dystopian and hardcore.

Wanting to make techno didn't make any sense anymore, so I completely switched off for like six months. I started listening to music I felt comfortable with, the music from my childhood—soul, funk, reggae, French songs. Reminding myself that we were gonna get through this shit. But the call of techno came back somehow. I couldn't reject it. And I got extremely frustrated, because I didn't have my weekly dose of love, the kind you get from a dance floor, from sharing, all this stuff I've been fed for the last 35 years. It's my drug, to get all these emotions, and I was in a fucking cold turkey phase.

The first thing I did was switch on the machine. I made a track thinking, "Okay, the day I'm going to be lucky enough to be able to go back DJing, I will have a new track to play and say, 'Guys, I didn't sit down and do fuck all, I made some music.'" Then I made another track, and another, and that's why they're all dance floor-oriented.

I started DJing again, and I made even more tracks. Then I had the idea for the album. But it started as something visceral, something to climb back up towards the light. And as soon as the idea of the LP was there, I had the title, plus the idea that it's not just a vinyl or CD—it's that plus the 7-inch in a limited box set plus the tape, because people would listen to each different item in a different way.

The tracklist of the CD—you sit down, you can listen to it from the beginning until the end. Even though it's a dance floor album, it still has some kind of a story. And I know that when you have a triple-vinyl, you have to get up so many times to change the sides, and you can only put two tracks on each side. So that tracklist is different. And the tape is mixed—only new tracks, but mixed like a DJ set. I knew I was slowing down, and I respect my fans, so I wanted to give them quite a lot.

"Then I thought, 'I don't want a fucking disease to decide for me.' So I started thinking about the after—how to slow down, find the best solution."

Do you feel like the experience of the pandemic and lockdown changed the way you think about or make dance music?

I guess it's pushed me to sit down. And really think forward. You know, when you start a career and you want it since you're a kid, when you start tasting the pleasure of it, you just basically put the sixth gear and you drive as fast as you can. Because you enjoy yourself. It's really exciting. It never stopped for me.

When I worked on my book Electrochoc, I was being interviewed for two years by the same guy, so it was like therapy where I had to think a lot about things, but I was still touring a lot. I never stopped for over 30 years. And then everything froze. I had to ask myself what was relevant—to stop, or carry on? I did ask myself if I should stop, if it was a sign. I've done my share, I've had a good career and I'm a happy man. I thought it might be a beautiful time for me to stop.

But then I thought, "I don't want a fucking disease to decide for me." So I started thinking about the after—how to slow down, find the best solution. The pandemic helped me figure out what to do, and gave me the allowance to step back and look at the bigger picture. I feel very in phase with what's going on. Funnily enough, a lot of us thought things would change after the pandemic, especially in the techno scene, which was going in a funny direction. A lot of people said things will change. And we believed it. And fuck all changed! I'm sorry to say that it actually got worse. Which is sad to see. So now I feel like I made the right decision at the right time. It was coming anyway, before the pandemic, I already felt that the clouds were coming and I had to do something. The pandemic helped me clear the sky up.

You've said before that this album is "deeper" than your last. What does that mean?

Deeper meaning that it's more visceral—and the fact that I completely rejected a lot of new music for quite a while before I started switching back on my machines. I made this album with no preconceptions, no ideas of where I wanted to go. Previously I had been inspired by other people's music, but this time it was more private. I've gone more into who I am as a producer, which is also why the tracks are so linked together style-wise—if you listen to my other albums, some of the tracks are quite weird, like you can't understand the connection between them. I could explain, but it's harder to understand.

With this album there's a very obvious link—the trance, the timing, the melodies, the textures. But maybe I'm wrong, because I listen to it with my ears, not yours, and I've been sitting with it for more than two years now. I've always felt that each one of my albums had some little wrong notes. Like, maybe I shouldn't have tried to force this track into this album, because it makes the album sound a bit weird. Perhaps I went too far. With this one, I think everything is incorporated well because I did it all in one shot.

Aside from how you produced the tracks so naturally, is there a theme or concept to the album that holds it together?

Everything is based around the fairground. I come from the fairground world, my father and grandfather were in the fairground business. Fairgrounds would stay in areas around Paris, usually there a month, and there's two very famous ones where my family used to work, and I would go every year until I left home when I was 18. I think if my dad didn't stop working there when I was a child, I would have carried on in that world.

I was able to listen to loud music—too loud—at the fairground, in this environment where there were flashing lights and stuff. That was my first idea of that, of why I like clubs so much, the strobes and all that. It comes from fairgrounds. So it was obvious to use this album to bring it back to my roots. I feel like this album is very me, and it's a chapter closing, or maybe a whole book. I also feel a strong connection with my first album. This feels like it could be the last proper techno album I ever make. So I had to make it feel like home.

So if this album is the closing of a book, what's next?

I don't know! I don't know what's going to happen next week. Maybe I will decide something else, or something bad will happen, or something good will happen, and that will suddenly trigger the idea for a new project. Throughout my career I've never done things in a calculating way. I think about the future, but I never think about, "If I do this, it will take me there." I'm as honest as I can.

I never really know where I'm going. There isn't always a big picture, so I don't fucking know. So that's why I can't tell you for sure that this is my last techno album, because maybe tomorrow isn't tomorrow. Maybe a techno producer will come to me and want to make an album and I'll get excited about it. Or I won't want to do it.

I don't know where life is going to bring me, and I can't tell you. I think each thing you do needs to have a sense. And there's only a sense when you actually have something to say, because you've lived something or because you're living in a certain situation. So far everything I've done has been linked to a part of my life. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.