Laurent Garnier - Tales Of A Kleptomaniac

I have regarded Laurent Garnier as one of the best DJs in the world for about the past 15 years. There are very few other DJs who have been able to acheive such a level of success while playing such an eclectic selection of music. As a producer Laurent has always tried to incorporate his love of diverse musics into his long players with the exception of 'Shot in the dark' which was a straight up house album.

I can't think of a single other producer out there that could build elements of Techno, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Drum n Bass and IDM into a single album and make it sound cohesive but 'Tales of a Kleptomaniac' acheives just that. The level of production is outstanding with so much depth and movement in every track. He has also managed to avoid any of the cliches of the moment. The techno is anything but minimal. The Drum n Bass combines hard, floor-rocking noisyness with jazzy undertones. The Hip-Hop brings funky French rhymes into the mix.

The disc also include a link to 'Opendisc' and a whole other album of music which shows the other side of Laurent's music. Soundtracks, Post-Rock style experimentation. Head music that defies categorisation. There is a certain sleazy, sexed up vibe that is near to his 'Cloud Making Machine' album.

It is also interesting to hear that Laurent sees his true fans as the ones that go out and buy the CD as opposed to downloading. I couldn't agree more. Pay that bit extra and support musicians!

This is Laurent's most fully realised album. One of the very best releases of 2009 in any genre.

Déjà vu.
This opus from Laurent Garnier doesn't bring much to his own culture and to ours either. You can't blame him for giving us some Garnier sound, can you? But this time, you can sometimes hardly recognise what's really new in this release from the others. You may even wonder if you're listening to a track taken from Unreasonable Behaviour or Tales Of A Kleptomaniac...
Jazzy spirit alright, but what's new in those melodies? I've heard them before, for sure, probably my own, when being bored and humming something fluid.
Including Hip Hop to this release doesn't sound a good choice either, especially when Garnier sound is involved. This may sound a bit severe, but I'm sure that well hard/softwarED teenagers can create the same kind of tracks. To my view the lyrics are not even worth it.
For Garnier's sake, I must admit the downloadable files are appreciable, though I'm not really into those atmospheric things...

This release doesn't sound as a whole, but something like a test, like "In which style am I the best?".
Garnier told in an interview that, while working on this release, he had listened to these tracks so many times he couldn’t listen to them again. I think I may share the same point of view, not having worked on them at all, nor listened to them so much though...

In my view, Unreasonable Behaviour remains his best long play release so far.