Photo CAROLINE MORT
Years before EDM was all about the drop, Busy P was reshaping mainstream dance music with his Ed Banger imprint and a bombastic sound that borrowed its crowd-pleasing cues from rock bands and “electronica” acts like Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. Not to mention the French touch and filtered house tracks Pedro Winter had already been a part of during his 12 years of managing Daft Punk.
That explains how the Parisian vet managed to book such a wide array of artists for his upcoming “20 Years of Party” residency at London’s XOYO club. Aside from featuring such longtime friends as DJ Falcon, Justice, Para One, Dimitri From Paris and some “very special guests”, the weekly run—starting October 3rd and winding down on December 19th—has wrangled such like-minded producers and DJs as Erol Alkan, James Lavelle, Rustie, Trevor Jackson, Tiga and Carl Craig. Quite the mixed bag, then, something Winter explained on Facebook:
In 1995 I threw my very first party ‘Hype’ at Folies Pigalle, It was house music all night long with DJ Gregory on the wheels of steel. I was running the club every Thursday, inviting DJs from the city to come and play. Most of them (including Dimitri from Paris, Motorbass, Dj Deep, Daft Punk, DJ Cam, Bob Sinclar…) became what they call ‘French Touch’.
At the end of 1995, Paris’ biggest party promoter David Guetta gave me a call. At the time he was ruling Paris nightlife, inviting DJs like David Morales, Masters at Work, Pete Tong and Frankie Knuckles to the city. David asked me to run ‘Le Fumoir’ which was located on the first floor of his own club Le Palace. I did the ‘Hype’ parties there for a year… Nightlife was fun, but a new project was waiting around the corner…
I teamed up with two young guys who were working on an album called ‘Homework’, and then for the next 12 years I had the pleasure of working with them; Daft Punk was the second musical chapter of my life.
In 2003 I’ve launched Ed Banger records. Justice, Dj Mehdi, Sebastian, Breakbot, Boston Bun, Mr Oizo, Feadz, Cassius & all have been showing the world how funky we are in France. We celebrated the 10 years anniversary of the label in 2013, the biggest party I ever produced, we created an amusement park in the heart of Paris, welcome to “Ed Bangerland”
Now, 20 years later XOYO invites me to be their new resident DJ and curate every Saturday until the end of 2015.
I want this residency to sound like a musical journey of a young man who discovered electronic music back in the 90’s and made his life about it, a young man who’s still looking for the perfect beat.
From Carl Craig to Gesaffelstein, for our love of Techno… From Dimitri from Paris to Breakbot, for our need of Disco… From Basement Jaxx to Justice, for our heads to bang…
Twelve nights, twenty-seven DJs, ten thousand clubbers, 4 letters X O Y O
Pre-sale tickets will be available tomorrow at 9 a.m., and the rest will be released on Thursday. Check out the dates and details here, or check out a Busy P set from Boiler Room a year back to give you another idea of what to expect:
