Paris's Ed Banger Records has gone from stylish upstart to world domination over the course of the past year. It doesn't hurt that the label has Daft Punk's former manager, Pedro Winter (aka Busy P), at its helm and fashion mecca Colette in its corner, but it's a stacked roster of electro rockers like Justice, SebastiAn, Feadz, and DJ Mehdi that has won the label so much success. Their forays into North America have been limited so far to some dates in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Canada, but hopefully a full-scale invasion including Seattle dates won't be too far behind (and SebastiAn at least is opening the July 29 Daft Punk show here).
For now, witnessing the Ed Banger spectacle means leaving town and country on a Sunday night to catch up with their limited tour in Vancouver, BC. (Mad thanks due to Vancouver DJs Paul Devro and Betti Forde for securing our way into the show and a couch to crash on, respectively.)
Vancouver's Caprice nightclub is smaller than Chop Suey, and it was ridiculously packed for the Sunday, March 25, event. They weren't even letting people in from the guest list when we got there after 11:00 p.m. For a minute, it seemed like this week's column would be about driving to Vancouver only to miss the show—the thickheaded bouncer almost kept SebastiAn out of the sold-out venue, but he got through, and eventually we did too.
Justice flanked Busy P on the decks in front of an insanely hyped crowd. The DJs mixed Les Rhythmes Digitales, the Prodigy, Bloc Party, the Rapture, Rick Ross's "Hustlin'," and plenty of their own material—I don't think I've ever seen a room of people go so nuts for Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker." They played Justice vs Simian's breakout hit "Never Be Alone" over a remix of Klaxons' "Atlantis to Interzone," dropping the music out for the entire crowd to scream along to the former's chorus. Justice's terrifically catchy electro-metal anthem "Waters of Nazareth" had the crowd going off the walls when it finally dropped near 3:00 a.m.
DJ Mehdi is Ed Banger's secret weapon. He's been a producer for years, he's released the label's first full-length, Lucky Boy, but he has nowhere near the name profile of the label's other acts. He was killing it all night though, grinning wildly as he mixed records and hyped his labelmates. He looked so happy to be playing this party. Justice and Busy P were on the turntables together for most of the night. SebastiAn and SoMe didn't really get time to stand out, but there were always at least five or six guys onstage, and the music was a consistently great glitched-out mix of electro, rock, breaks, and French filter house. There were plenty of air horns, one crowd surfer, and a brief interlude during which Mehdi struck Christlike poses and everyone else onstage made crosses with their arms. It was an absurdly (ironically?) religious moment. The crew closed out their set with Rage Against the Machine and then they played an encore of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over."
Ed Banger Records is an unstoppable party-wrecking machine, easily worth a hasty drive to Canada and back—or whatever it takes to get them to Seattle.
