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LAURENT GARNIER Retrospective F Communications ****

Retrospectives are strange beasts. While Laurent Garnier would probably argue that his best days are still to come (and ongoing projects such as his collaborations with jazzer Bugge Wesseltoft offer much potential in this regard), any collection tends to act as a full stop of sorts. Rounding up the last dozen years of Garnier's output as a producer, with tracks from various albums alongside a couple of choice remixes, Retrospective is a stunning document of Garnier's development as a producer since he set up F Communications with Eric Morand in 1994. While the fierce, alluring techno grooves with which he first made his name still spring a punch, it's the Frenchman's constant search for new and varied sounds that threads this album together. Be it his bugged out refit of Carl Craig's Demented or the widescreen euphoria of Astral Dreams, Garnier is a producer perfectly adept at designing sounds for use on or off the dancefloor. www.fcom.fr Jim Carroll