There is a theory that if an infinite time has passed then we are most likely not living in reality, but rather reliving it. That our existence takes place on the event horizon of a black hole that has swallowed the universe in its entirety. What was once real is now data, compressed into a hologram, spinning infinitely on the precipice. For us, held by these immense forces, it will take an almost infinite amount of time to cross the threshold and fall in. The spiral turn becomes exponentially slower as we near the edge…

Munich motorway turns under the wheels of Muallem's car, enroute to the hotel before mine and Laurent Garnier’s appearance at Blitz Club. "I like the music but the mixdown is awful, the drop just doesn't hit." We swerve in the road as Muallem cranes his neck to look at me, the man who would insult God. Laurent looks at me through the rearview mirror and nods in agreement. “I noticed this too when I played it out. You should mix it. I'll send you the stems.”

Time creeps forward. “Teach me how to make my tracks sound better.” That's why I'm sitting in Laurent's studio, with a regimented three-day lesson plan in my head. He heard the mixdown and immediately wanted to know how it was possible. Ego was not in the building, only boundless humility. We are both learning something today. I don't touch the controls, Laurent must learn to steer himself. Our ears are trained in different times on different records. Both educated by Black music, but of different eras. For Laurent, the finest jazz records ever committed to vinyl. For me, the afro-futurist rendering of melancholic trap music rattling sub frequencies through .wavs. We are turning in the same direction along the same thread, just at different points.

The sun turns overhead, past the peak of the church rooftop. Hands salute to soften the glare. Stuffing my face with a giant pain au chocolat in front of Laurent somewhere in the South of France. Between flakes asking about fate. How did I end up here? “This is how it was always going to be,” he says. At the time, still turning reality in my mind, I wasn't so sure.

Did fate exist in the first reality or does it only exist now, turning on the event horizon? If you listen carefully, as a record turns under the point of the needle, you can faintly hear the grooves echo on either side, what has been and what is going to come, compressed against the present inside a spinning platter. It seems ridiculous, that something as infinite as music, which holds a creator's cadence, emotions, history and ability in a single snapshot can be so small.

In 2020 we felt the inertia, when it seemed like the turning stopped. I couldn't make music; Laurent couldn't stop making music. When the machine started to come to life, on August 1st 2021, Laurent sent me the first demos. 12 tracks. A long awaited exhale.

Frustrated that in the final gauntlet of a captivated club crowd the message was falling apart, he asked for my help once again. I sat forward and listened, fingers ready to take note of any errant frequency, misplaced compressor or veiled emotional intention.

Eventually I responded. More insults to God. If I read them out in Muallem’s car he would have surely swerved into oncoming traffic to stop the unrelenting tide of blunt critique. But this was just the start. What followed in the months to come was an endurance by all parties involved.

We are fine-tuning wave functions. Turn one way - too open, too pop-y. Turn another way - too dull, too raw. Turn another - too tough for home listening. Turn another - too weak for the club. I never once held the controls, Laurent was always in charge of steering. At some point in the two hundred plus emails of advice or listening feedback, I went in his greetings from 'Mon Roshy Chou Chou' to 'Master Shifu'.

There is a theory that if at least 13.7 billion years has passed, and an infinite amount of time is yet to come, then it is statistically impossible for you to experience existence for just a single moment. The atomically small blip of a human life in the chasm of infinite time. Far more probable that you have existed in some form before, and will exist in some form forever more.

This project exists almost in spite of the environment around it. Trends in the genre have evolved. Faster, harder, noisier. A fitting release and reaction to years of economic stagnation and social isolation. But Laurent has always had a singular vision of what he must achieve with and through music.

In his book Electrochoc, documenting his life in dance music, Laurent comments on the process of making his first techno album, Shot In The Dark (1994).

“I had to make sure that the music told a story, and, most importantly, learn to write tracks that could stand on their own as well as being an integral part of an album. I didn't just want to write 'tracks' for the dance floor. There was much more to this than I thought…”

Laurent is at the controls, ignoring the current reality and instead channelling the self, not as it exists in the here and now, but as it has always existed, in its infinite form. Music which refuses to exist in relation to what is around it, to be nailed down to one particular place and one particular time. It is music that is dispersed beyond the present. When you look in the mirror and see your own eyes looking back and not the infinite darkness of non-existence, it is because timelessness is in all of us. We only need to look inside ourselves to see it.

The project's title, 33 Tours Et Puis S'en Vont, roughly translates to '33 Turns And Then Leave'. Declaring it to the press as his last techno album before he retires from formally touring as a DJ altogether in 2024. The title, a reference to the finale of a French puppet show, where the characters perform a turn before they exit stage-left, the curtains drawn. The last press photos in the lead up to the announcement are taken between packed up trailers, lorries and vans. “I am the youngest son of a family of fairground people,” is how Laurent opens the second chapter of Electrochoc. But the fairground is closed, the lot now empty. The key turns in the ignition, time to move on.

Before we went B2B at Spiritland to celebrate the UK premier of his documentary, ‘Off The Record,’ he asked me if I wanted to remix a track off the album I had spent so much time listening to. That had turned in my mind for so long. My previous approaches to remixing had been uncompromising. They could hardly be defined as remixes, original tracks with passing reference to another perhaps. My 'big room' sounds too massive to leave space for another. But with Laurent’s stems in hand, something interesting happened. Halfway through the process I sent him a message:

“It doesn't sound like a remix, it sounds like a collaboration. I don't have to fight any of your elements, they just sit there and they work. I put my parts on top and it just fits. It's very odd, I've never had this happen before... There's something about the track that sounds more you & me than just Works Of Intent.”

Upon completion, it turned in my ears on repeat. It could not be mistaken for anything other than us, a perfect fusion. Two storytellers jointly wringing your emotions out through your ears. But most importantly for me, proof in a form that I couldn't deny that “this was always going to happen.” I'm listening closely, as the grooves in the record turn against the needle. I can hear he was right.

The CD version of the album opens on “Tales From The Real World,” a contemplation of reality. The voice of 'philosophical entertainer' Allan Watts, fictionalising string theory as a "marvellous system of wiggles''. A track Laurent uses so often as a showstopper, with Watts' ending refrain on meditation as a method to feel closer with the universe. Requesting we “shut up” and listen. Somewhere, rotating on the compressed platter of an event horizon, the last wiggle of the speaker cone reverberates across a hall. Atomically small blips with battered ears and tired smiles roar. They demand one more turn.