This story is about the journey... About the journey, destination of which is high-fiving Laurent. About the journey on the highways and pathways of house, techno, d'n'b and old good rock. About the journey, pathed with beautiful moments of the long-lasting DJ career and discoveries through the many years of production. The journey through Laurent Garnier's very own coloured city - I met him there for the first time.

But the journey starts not so romantically with running in the rain to the train heading towards London. An idea of coming back to a safe and dry home has flashed quickly but another one was much more powerful - Laurent is dropping one of his rare DJ sets in UK, so to miss this event would be simply unforgivable! The darkness on the other side of the window, a short queue (thanks god we skipped the main queue which was, like in most London's clubs, Huge!) and here we are, at the Bar AKA which marks the way to the club.

Guests of Innervisions, Alex From Tokyo, Marcus Worgull and Ali Tillett, are already spinning their house selection at AKA, but we're here not for them tonight, so we make our way straight to the main stage. Laurent's sounds are greeting us in lounge, and I'm not too unhappy to miss the first hour of performance - the club is still half empty.

After grabbing a couple of beers at the bar, sharing the thoughts with a weird Irishman, it's time to check Laurent's beats. He's still warming the crowd with not-so-laurentish deep and techy house, so there's plenty of time to check the surroundings. Nothing too fantastic in the interior - subtly stylish lounge, broken cigarettes machine, lovely smiling ladies at the bar and HUGE speakers system, but we're here not for interior after all - as experience from some Lithuanian clubs advises, it's not interior that counts...

Back to the music, Laurent is still playing rather a laid back housey stuff, while steering us towards more proggy sounds at the same time. Trackheadz' "Our Music" makes everyone lift their hands up and we realize that it was just a longish intro and in his third or so hour legendary man at the decks finally grabs the crowd and pulls it into unforgettable dance of sounds. Progressive amalgamates with gentle techno, stirs with breaks and even a hint of good old break beat (yes, the same thing, to which Norman Cook introduced us many years ago).

But the real journey starts when Laurent steers us to the highway of what he knows best and hits us with a hard kicking techno! The legs start whispering "hey, we wanna move faster" and I start regretting for going out to the dancefloor quite rarely recently - the back is crying for a rest. But Laurent is not willing to let me rest and punches even harder - with a blast of proper drum'n'bass this time. DJ Fresh knocks my legs, ears, brain and makes every hair on your body melt, so Laurent gives us some rest and comes back to house.

4AM and it gets a bit boring when rather sleepy prog is ruling the dancefloor and I am already planning a journey back while finishing yet another San Miguel but a short delay is worth a while and Laurent comes back to what he knows best - half an hour of his bleepy mad techno and back to d'n'b again. Laurent shouts out "it's time to bed", the crowd disagrees and brilliant sound system of The End kicks in to drill down to every single bone of yours and help you reach the orgasm when Mr. Garnier punches with the toughest techno wave.

The last two hours was a charming mixture of house, techno, d'n'b and good old rock. Laurent was sharing the champagne with Innervisions gang, waving his hand, dancing and even managed to play "Relight My Fire". The most enduring and loyal ones stayed up until 7AM while Laurent, gently kicked by security, finished his performance with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - an incredible last note to this mad night... Well, it didn't end up so quickly to be fair as the DJ didn't give up so easily when asked to leave the booth and even with the lights on he still managed to please everyone with 20 minutes of variations and mixer-kicks on topics of "Out Of Space" and "The Man With The Red Face"... Not forgetting high-fiving the fans of course...

Couldn't move my legs, fell asleep jillion times on the train, but didn't feel that good for quite a while! Trust me, HE is the man to hear, to see, to feel. Playing for eight hours the way he did is way not for many DJ's. Though his set was Londonish and not-so-hard and it was an interesting experience to see some two thirds of the crowd staring without knowing what to do during the most important parts of techno and d'n'b, but I definitely am looking forward to his next show! Well, and perhaps it's about time to move my aging bones more often, so they don't ache next time... ;)