Ed Banger 10th Anniversary

As many of you know, Busy P‘s legendary Ed Banger Records has been celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a series of massive concerts around the globe – London, Japan (and I’m straight off the block), America, and back.  Most of these dates have been stand-alone stages at some of the world’s top festivals, including Sonar Festival Barcelona and Hard Summer Fest in Los Angeles (see our recap); a true testament to the legacy the Parisian label has created and continues to build upon year after year.

With New York City’s November 2nd Hammerstein Ballroom and Montréal’s Halloween stops slowly creeping (ha) upon us, we feel as though this Throwback Thursday would be a good one to show some love for one of the most influential record labels in electronic music history.

Pedro Winter (a/k/a Busy P)’s rise to prominence came first in the mid 90’s, as Daft Punk‘s manager through their own meteoric rise to legend-status. With his demand as a manager at a high, he founded Headbangers Entertainment in 2002 to manage the ever-growing list of artists interested in getting the Daft Punk treatment themselves.  Managing a who’s who of French-house heavyweights (Cassius, DJ Mehdi, and more) proved to be an arduous task for Winter. With a desire to continue to support the music he loved, without compromising the attention that needed to be paid to each artist, Headbangers Entertainment became Ed Banger Records in 2003 – a record label for all the music Busy P had been championing all along.

Jump forward to 2003, a duo of Parisian art students-turned-electro-metal innovators-to-be, Justice, release a remix of Simian‘s “Never Be Alone” for a college radio contest in France.  Immediately catching the attention of Winter, the duo is signed to Ed Banger, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Becoming blog favorites and genre trailblazers almost over night, Justice’s 2007 Ed Banger release  put the ever-growing label on the map. Drawing upon Pedro Winter affiliates of the past – Daft Punk, Cassius, etc., just as much as it did hair metal and Bach, Justice pioneered a sound all their own.  I could write an entire feature on how affected me alone, and I’m sure many young electronic music fans like myself would too.  The album’s success introduced electronic dance music to an entire new generation of internet-savvy listeners and ushered in a new era for dance music as a whole.

To attribute all of Ed Banger’s success on one album would be one-sided and I absolutely take the blame here, but it would be hard to see the label become the powerhouse it is today without it. And that’s not to discredit the other incredible artists that have been integral parts of the Ed Banger roster over the years: Breakbot, SebastiAn, Mr. Oizo, and Riton, to name a few.  Ed Banger is synonymous with French electro – the disco samples, the filters, the distortion, the stacatto funk rhythms. Hell, Ed Banger is practically synonymous with an entire movement in culture.

It’s been said that Kanye discovered Daft Punk after being introduced to Justice’s music following his rushing of the stage at 2006’s MTV Europe Music Awards (their video for “We Are Your Friends” won Best Video over “Touch the Sky”). Can you imagine music today if Kanye never put out “Stronger?” Would the billion-dollar rave culture of today exist in a world without that? Could this website even exist? It’s hard to tell. What we do know is, 10 years in the making, Busy P and his Ed Banger affiliates have been changing the shape of music for the better.

Here is the aforementioned  in its entirety, get ready to break out your leather jackets and menthols.

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