I would have to admit my first genuine blunder of 2011 has to be missing
Busy P's and
DJ Mehdi's London stop-off on their worldwide 'Let The Children Techno' tour. I can't even claim to have a good reason- that night all I ended up doing was drinking a couple of pints on Brick Lane, tending to my royally wasted brother as he sunk v0dka-laced Amstel. I did have plans for something a little more fulfilling, but regardless of that failure it would never have topped an Ed Banger party at XOYO, especially as Cassius were also lined-up alongside P and Mehdi.
I've seen the photos from the night and now I've heard the mix to compliment the tour. Together, I can safely say those two discoveries have condemned me to guilt, regret and even a mild sense of dejection. Ed Banger was in town and I wasn't there. I thought going to Perlon's night at The CAMP Basement on Friday and aimlessly leaving before Zip or Baby Ford were on was bad enough (blame it on the Strongbow this time), but not even trying to see Busy P, DJ Mehdi and Cassius at one of London's most unique and interesting clubs tops the failures so far. Putting that episode aside, it's good to see the Ed Banger crüe struttig their stuff again, after a relatively quiet 2010. The slogan 'Let The Children Techno' is not new, as anyone who is familiar with their CoolCats site will know from one of their original and most classic T-shirt designs, but only now has it become really relavant
While Justice stay frustratingly and mysteriously off-radar and Uffie continues to follow where her album's fanfare takes her, Busy P seems to be shape-shifting into slightly new territory, especially with his own DJing style. Anyone who witnessed him at EXIT last year will have noticed his obvious fondness for dubstep, with Doctor P's
Sweet Shop and Flux Pavillion's
You've Got To Know opening his set, a surprise for me as I expected nothing but a purely electro session from start to finish. Earlier on in the year, Pedro appeared at Berghain where he warned he would be consciously keeping within the strict realms of techno, so I can't imagine we would have been hearing him drop anything from his own label there. Several of his charts have been noticeably different too, I recall seeing Skream's name somewhere on one of them not so long ago. Does this mark a new era for Ed Banger? One that shifts the label's musical identity from the uber-cool indie/electro/house sound it's associated with to something more underground, less flashy and arguably more serious? Whether I liked the idea or not is another question, but that theory certainly gathered more momentum for me when I heard of the 'Let The Children Techno' project that Busy P and Mehdi had devised. I may have missed their visit to London, but after hearing the mix they have released, I can answer with some degree of relief that their identity hasn't changed, and we can still look forward to all their showy flamboyance, cracking parties, lofty synthlines and not seeing them at fabric on a Saturday. The Ed Banger 'brand' is very much still alive and the gang are not producing, or spinning techno at all.
Why the mix is called 'Let The Children Techno' I don't know, because there really is nothing that resembles classic techno at all. There's no Sven Väth or Carl Craig here, the closest it comes to techno are the entries from Djedjotronic and Zombie Nation, the latter will happily admit his style these days has definitely moved away from the pounding stuff he was turning out 10 years ago, or even two years ago on his excellent
Zombielicious album. Interestingly, the mix doesn't feel at all like any of the Ed Rec. volumes despite maintaining the same signature electro sound, but this is most likely down to the diverse range or artists that appear on the mix. While SebastiAn's noise, Mr Oizo's mischief and Breakbot's ease is all there, Riton's
One Night Stand is somehow different, as is Brodinski and Tony Senghore's
Anagogue which pulses and reverberates, but in a way you wouldn't find from the original Ed Banger messieurs.
Gessafelstein's
The Voice is a bit more trippy and pared down, while Skream finds his way on there with his screechy dub cut
Boat Party. But despite all these slight divergences, the Ed Banger voice is still shouting at you throughout the mix. It's fun, fresh and dare I say it, cool. Exactly what Medhi and Busy P have been providing us with from the very roots of their origin and why I have so much affection for them. Mehdi's track
TragicoMehdi is a glorious, tinkering blend of electro, house and hip-hop, not the kind of thing you expect, or want, to hear in the world's dingiest underground clubs at 8am, but is what we want when hour after hour of mindlessly grooving to minimal is not so appealing either. It's an interesting mix, with an exciting, if entirely predictable cast of artists, but as far as super-cool electro is concerned, Ed Banger are back doing what they do best.
SebastiAn - Enio
Djedjotronic - The Invisible Landscape
Riton - One Night Stand
Let The Children Techno mixed and compiled by Busy P & DJ Mehdi is out now on Ed Banger Records
If you haven't already guessed from out notable absence over the last few weeks (after an intense easter break of posting), me and Chris are faced with our final exam period this year so our attention has been somewhat divided recently. However, that's not to say we have always had our nose in 800-plus page books. Not only have we maintained our unrelenting attitude to looking for new music, we've also kept the weekends for ourselves and have experienced plenty of the weird and the wonderful over this festive period. Reviews and other things will be up shortly, but for now I'll leave you with my April chart to mull over.
