All Ears: Vibrations Across Time And Space
The pressure in my chest is what I remember most keenly about hearing Laurent Garnier perform his underground hit "The Man With The Red Face" with a saxophonist in the club. The year was 2001, it was October (give or take a week or so) and the French techno producer was at the tail-end of an 18-month tour for his 2000 album Unreasonable Behaviour that had taken him around the world. The corner of the planet I saw him in was Newcastle in the north of England, a 90-minute train ride from my then-home in Leeds. I traveled to club nights across the north regularly with friends, and that night we were at Shindig at the now-defunct club Foundation. A couple of years earlier, it'd been known as Riverside, the alternative music venue where Nirvana played their first U.K. show in 1989.
In my memory, I see the gleam of the saxophone's swan-like neck through a crowd of people; it twists and turns as if wrestling its owner, relegating them to the shadows. But my mind is probably filling in the gaps because the chances I had my eyes closed for much of the nine-minute track are high. Closed-eye listening locks the world out and the sound in.
"The Man With The Red Face" starts with the
