Laurent Garnier (born February 1, 1966) is a French DJ, electronic music producer, composer, and label founder whose career helped establish techno and house music in France. Also known as Choice and DJ Pedro, Garnier is recognized for combining the physical force of club music with a broad musical curiosity that encompasses jazz, funk, ambient, breakbeat, disco, and experimental electronics.
Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Garnier became involved with music while working at the French Embassy in London during the mid-1980s. After moving to Manchester in 1986, he encountered the city's emerging house culture and became closely associated with the Hacienda club, where Mike Pickering was a resident DJ. The influence of Chicago house, Detroit techno, and the early acid-house movement shaped Garnier's approach to DJing. He adopted the name DJ Pedro and began developing the long, eclectic sets that would become central to his reputation.
Garnier returned to France in the late 1980s and became an important figure in the country's developing rave and club scene. During the early 1990s, he organized the Wake Up parties and held influential residencies at venues including the Rex Club in Paris and L'An-Fer in Dijon. His sets connected the French audience with developments in British, American, and European dance music, while his energetic and open-ended programming resisted narrow genre boundaries.
His first significant recordings appeared through the FNAC Music Dance Division, including "French Connection" and the "A Bout de Souffle" EP. After the label's collapse, Garnier and Eric Morand established F Communications, an influential independent label that also released music by artists such as St Germain and Mr. Oizo. The label became an important platform for French electronic music and helped give the country's scene an international identity, although Garnier has rejected the idea that his work should simply be reduced to the "French touch" label.
Garnier's debut album, *Shot in the Dark*, arrived in 1995. He followed it with *30* in 1997, a record that included "Crispy Bacon," one of his best-known club tracks. His international profile expanded further with *Unreasonable Behaviour* in 2000. The album's "The Man with the Red Face," built around a prominent saxophone performance, became a defining Garnier composition and one of the most recognizable tracks in his catalog. Later albums such as *The Cloud Making Machine* (2005), *Tales of a Kleptomaniac* (2009), and *la HOME box* (2015) continued his movement between dance-floor intensity and more detailed, atmospheric production.
Garnier has also worked beyond conventional club releases. He composed for film, television, and theater, produced the 2015 album *Scarifications* for rapper Abd Al Malik, and collaborated with the Liminanas on the psychedelic soundtrack-like album *De Pelicula* in 2021. Through his radio programs, books, festival appearances, and the Cod3 QR label, co-founded with Scan X, he has remained an advocate for musical discovery as much as a performer.
The album *33 tours et puis s'en vont* (2023) reaffirmed Garnier's continuing role as a major figure in electronic music. More than a producer of individual club classics, he is known for treating DJing as a form of live composition: expansive, unpredictable, and rooted in the belief that dance music can be both popular entertainment and serious musical culture.