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A Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo helmet to be exact. This video made my day, and I love that DIY projects like this exist.
I think that I heard, back around the time of the Alive 2007 tour, that the real helmets cost thousands of dollars to make. Check the link below for a more detailed explanation of how this was done.
Daft Punk: FINAL! -Volpin Props
In case you don’t get it (I don’t expect you to), the title is to be translated to be Daft Punk/SebastiAn/Kavinsky/Ratatat Concert. This is the concert a friend and I will be going to on July 21 in LA. Words cannot really express how excited I am about this.
I will start with Daft Punk. I really do love their music. As much as it pains me that they are very close to stealing material and slapping their name on it, I feel that they are innovative in their sampling ways and deserve as much praise as they get. They have succeeded at not disappearing as so many electronic fad artists do. Why? Because they are more than their music.
Daft Punk has become a level of quality in persona and live shows on top of their amazing music that other artists can only strive for. One of the big reasons that electronic music isn’t big in the States is because of the difficulties of putting together entertaining live sets with real visuals. Just watch a YouTube video of a recent Daft Punk concert and you will see that this isn’t a problem for them.
SebastiAn is my favorite electronic artist in terms of music right now. Everything of his, from his albums to his remixes, blows me away. Just read my latest assessment of the Ed Banger crew for more on SebastiAn.
Kavinsky is still a bit mysterious to me. He is the artist who’s music I have heard the least of. I have his two EPs but I don’t feel that they do him justice. His sound is a retro-house electro type thing. Old 80s synths are all over the place in his songs. I like it, but I hope there’s something more for me to grasp at the concert.
Ratatat is the ugly duckling of this group. Not because I don’t like them (I LOVE them) but because they actually play instruments. I’m really looking forward to hearing their very unique sound blasted at me through a huge sound system. To me, Ratatat is a sort of a Dueling Banjos funneled through the electronica scene with a drum machine thrown in for size. I have never heard anything like them, and I love it.
So there you have it, a short assessment of the artists I will see on Saturday, July 21, 2007 at about 9pm. Jealous?
There is no use in disputing the point: Ed Banger Records is the king of electro. EdRec’s superb lineup consists of (left to right in the picture) Feadz, SebastiAn, Vicarious Bliss, Uffie, Busy P, So Me, DJ Mehdi, and Justice (not pictured: Krazy Baldhead and Mr. Flash). As of now, I cannot say that there is a single artist that I dislike. Each artist has a unique sound that doesn’t attempt to mimic any other artist on the label (or any other artist in general). Enjoy! (Part 1 consists of Busy P, Feadz, Justice, Mr. Flash, and SebastiAn)
in alphabetical order… also, please click on the artist’s names to go to a HypeMachine search for their music…
Busy P: How fitting he is the first on this list. Busy P, aka Pedro Winter, is a DJ/producer, manager of Daft Punk and Justice, and owner of Ed Rec. It is safe to assume that whatever Busy P touches turns, not to gold, but to platinum immediately. While I could speak on Daft Punk for pages (and I will in a coming post), Busy P’s music is more important right now. He sticks alongside what the label is known for: French electro house. It’s not as grimy or as disco as Justice, not as punch-you-in-the-face as SebastiAn, but the sound definitely holds its own against P’s label-mates.
Feadz: Aside from being Uffie’s love interest, he is also her producer. The majority of his current material has been released through Uffie. Pre-Uffie, he worked with Mr. Oizo on Analog Worms Attack (a sweet album if I may say so). The beats he lays down for Uffie are characterized by their stuttered distorted nature. It sounds as if Feadz takes each and every sample and cuts/chops/pastes them into any mashup that resembles a semi-ordered form to create his music.
Justice: The constant praise coming from all sides about this DJ duo hasn’t seemed to slowed down since their first EP Waters of Nazareth was released a little over a year ago in June of 2006. They take whatever material they are given (or make up) and filter it to sound like heavy metal had a head on collision with disco funk. Like many of Ed Rec’s artists, Justice are amazing remix artists as well as superb at creating original material. Their recently released debut LP titled † is varied and remains true to Justice’s signature style resulting in an album that will stay in rotation for quite some time. Reading about Justice in popular magazines signifies that electronic music might be able to become mainstream once again.
Mr. Flash: From what I’ve heard (which isn’t much), Mr. Flash mixes electro with tweaked hip hop and a tad of disco thrown in for flavor. The song Disco Dynamite which is featured on Ed Rec Vol. 2 is one of my favorite songs on the compilation album. He’s been producing music for TTC since about 1999, and had an mix-comp titled Monsieur Sexe come out in 2005. A slew of EPs and remixes have followed, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on much.
SebastiAn: My favorite artist on Ed Rec. His album RossRossRoss is something I put on only when I can’t be uninterrupted with the volume at max. He is probably the best remixer I have ever come across, and Daft Punk has said that his remix for Human After All was the best remix that they had ever commissioned. What he does to songs isn’t really fair. In terms of remixes, he makes the original artist sound like an amateur. In terms of his own music, it’s so aggressive that you might have to have stitches after listening to just one track. It’s glitchy, distorted, stuttered, and sounds like he took each sample and filtered out the highs and lows leaving the mids (and then ripped them to shreds). Please listen to anything of his.
There you have it, Part 1 of the two part series on Ed Banger Records.