If any further evidence was needed of the impact of DJ techniques on home recording, look no further than the electronic improvisations of Laurent Garnier. Laurent is one of Europe's leading DJs. As a friend of Dream Frequency's Ian Bland, he actually cut his teeth on the Manchester club scene - notably at The Hacienda - before introducing house music to his home town at 'Wake Up Paris', a weekly night at the French capital's Rex club.

A string of legendary singles followed, as did DJ appearances throughout the Continent. Forming his own label F Communications earlier this year, Laurent felt that the time was right to invest in some equipment and get down to recording an album. The result - Shot In The Dark, out on October 17th - was recorded and mixed entirely at home.

Instead of decks, Laurent has Cubase and a Soundcraft Spirit mixer. And instead of records, he spins the sounds of a Kurzweil K2000, Roland JD800, Juno 106, R8 MkII, Novation Bass Station and EPS16+ sampler. Drawing on his experience in control of the dance floor, he has simply dispensed with other people's music and distilled his own. No technophile, he puts simplicity above all else.

"I don't even build tracks in the sequencer," he reveals. "You lose too much feeling that way. I have a 20-second loop of all the instruments I'm going to use, and mix them directly to DAT. Everything I do is live."

This may mean having to do about 25 mixes until he gets the right one, but the performance element is assured.

"It's like mixing a record. I work like a DJ; I don't want the strings or the beats to come in dead on a specific time, I want them to come in whenever I feel like it. Everything just goes round and round in Cubase. Some tracks on the album may not sound like it, but that's how every single one was done.

"You can have a wicked bassline, but without the right sound for it, it'll be cheesy"

"Maybe the strings come in too slowly, or the bass drum misses a bar, but I don't care. It sounds different, and certainly it doesn't sound too quantised and perfect."

When Laurent does introduce other elements into the mix, synchronisation becomes a matter far too alchemical to entrust to machines.

"There's a track called 'Aural Sex' - I'm not sure whether it'll get onto the album because the sample clearance fee is far too high - which uses a really dirty female voice on tape, which I just played through the mixer and built the track around it. There was no need for timecode, or even tape editing. Everything sounds in time."

"I'm not sure whether it'll get onto the album because the sample clearance fee is far too high"

The same technique was used with a relaxation tape - a male voice intoning deep breathing exercises and so on - for the ambient mix of the next single 'Astral Dreams'. Laurent calls his found voices acapellas, as in unaccompanied vocal arrangements, and treats them as the lead vocal. The nature of the monologue is allowed to dictate the mood of the music, which is pieced around the uninterrupted tape.

"Of course, it has to be a voice talking and not singing. A singing vocal has to be sampled. But if you use a voice just talking, you can go with the flow. It's amazing - and it can also be very funny. On 'Aural Sex', it really sounds like she's talking with the music, interacting with a backing track - but the voice came first."

Happening upon these techniques, Laurent shows the value of the inventive novice. Just as punk musicians once re-invented the vocabulary of rock and pop with the breezy economy with which they handled their instruments, DJs are now attacking music technology like a breath of fresh air.

"Working with this equipment is completely new to me," Laurent continues. "I'm crap at reading manuals. I just switch the machines on and go with it. I'm experimenting all the time. It might take me six hours to do what someone else could do in five minutes, but in the end I have an album which is entirely by me. Nobody's interfered, or given me any little tricks.

"Accidents happen all the time. Sometimes you get lucky, when you switch something on and it causes an amazing effect. But I work very hard at the sounds. Sounds are the most important thing, when I'm writing. You can have a wicked bassline, but without the right sound for it, it'll be cheesy. That happens if you overload a mix, too. There's a lot of productions with too many sounds, which is the same as having the wrong single sound. I believe in simple music being the most effective. As long as you have the right sound on the right loop, you can really make something interesting."