Kat Says: “Not Even Knee Surgery Can Keep Me From Tthhee Ppaarrttyy”
An essay about my love for Ed Banger and the label’s incredible 20-Year Anniversary party at Printworks in London.
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Hey Friends,
Let me tell you about the time I flew eight hours to London eight days after out-patient knee surgery to see Ed Banger celebrate its 20th birthday.
Hahaha, man! My friend Jordan told me it was gonna be a good story one day if I just fucking did it, and it already is! Only took about five all-out anxiety attacks, 40,000 air miles, $200, 810 mg of aspirin, two crutches, two pairs of compression socks, three conversations with my surgeon’s staff, ADA seating access, and four or five very patient friends to pull it off—but who’s counting?
The wild thing about life is, you don’t sit around and remember all the inconveniences of an adventure. When it’s all said and done, what you remember is the pay off and the thrill of total freedom.
For me, the chance to see Justice, Uffie, Breakbot and Irfane, Myd, Busy P, So Me, Riton, Feadz, Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon, Erol Alkan, Brodinski, Annie Mac and more play for eight hours in a former newspaper printing plant was the best payoff imaginable.
Ed Banger music has been the most meaningful soundtrack to the last 15 years of my life. The way these artists mix high-art concepts with DIY attitudes, pulling references from the seemingly disparate miasma of punk, metal, indie, hip-hop, disco, electro and techno into one beautiful, haunting and dangerously explosive sound has become the bar by which I grade music’s potential.
It’s popularity matched perfectly with my college experience, and I do wholeheartedly believe that the passion it sparked in me directly led to my career as a successful music journalist, and is entirely the reason electronic dance music has become my area of expertise (Daft Punk gets lumped into this whole dialogue, being a part of the extended Ed Banger family, of course).
This music quite literally and forcefully makes me feel things. It makes me move my body and let go of whatever existential dread and bottled-up bullshit would otherwise keep me from living my fullest and truest expression of self. Having access to that sort of magic is something I hope everyone in the world can find for themselves.
It was 150 percent worth the four days of delirium I sustained during my flash-pan international trip, even more so because I met total strangers who felt exactly the way I did, and not least of all because the experience proved to me how totally fine I actually am and pulled me out of the couch-ridden cave I’d lived in for the previous 25 days.
Further Reading: Remembering Neon Liger, Florida's Most Epic Party (Miami New Times, 2018)
I guess I should explain how I hurt myself. I haven’t written a newsletter in a month, because honestly, the whole ordeal plunged me into a weird dissociative depression. I have another essay coming next week about how seriously hurting myself doing the thing I love most has fucked with my head and given me perspective, but for now, just know this:
At the start of February, I traveled to Gainesville to meet up with college friends and relive our glory days at the Neon Liger 15 year reunion. We all got drunk the night before the party, and my buddy Vijay decided to bust out his “Waters of Nazareth” vinyl from 2006 with the DJ Funk remix of “Let There Be Light,” which is one of my favorite songs ever ever ever, and can be listened to below.
I hadn’t heard it in probably 12 years, and I immediately lost all control and started bouncing that ass on the floor, hydraulic pumpin’ low, as you do. I was like, literally screaming at my poor friend Mike about how this music is just B E T T E R, and I woke up the next morning with my knees covered in bruises.
“I should seriously buy some knee pads,” I said from Vijay’s couch, but I didn’t, and 12 hours later, as I was leading a crowd of college kids into a sweat-dripped frenzy while twerking on top of a speaker (hey, it was low to the ground and very wide), my right knee cap jerked to the left as if someone has punched it full force.
Seventeen days later, I was lying on a hospital bed (unsuccessfully) trying to keep my shit together while an anesthesiologist explained to me that in 20 minutes, she was going to knock me unconscious and put a breathing tube down my throat, but I wasn’t going to remember it so it was totally fine and I shouldn’t freak out, really.
Eight days after that, I was on a direct flight to London! WOOOO!
It was an overnight route, but I didn’t sleep, because I had worked myself up about how important it was to move every 30 minutes to fight the risk of blood clots. I was an absolute mess before takeoff, but by landing, I realized that—sleep deprived as I was—I felt altogether healthy and normal.
The man who checked my passport in the custom’s line asked me what I’d come to London for.
“I’m going to a concert,” I said smiling from my airport-assistance wheelchair.
“What concert?”
“There’s a label called Ed Banger, and they’re turning 20 this year and throwing a party at Printworks.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah! I have crutches.”
“Are you alone?”
“Well, sir, because these are my friends, I’ll never be alone again.”
I’d actually flown by myself, so I waited in the Heathrow airport for a couple hours until my friends Lisa and Jose landed, then we all went to get Malaysian food at Roti King just off the Euston tube stop, and the adventure was on!
The day of the party, Ed Banger hosted a pop-up takeover of the Rough Trade record store’s East location. I hobbled past giant Space Invader and Shepard Fairey murals, smiling ear to ear as I heard familiar favorite tunes pouring out the Rough Trade doorway.
There was a skinny guy with bright yellow hair spiked up to match his Sex Pistols t-shirt. He was shivering with a beer in his hand just outside the entrance. I complimented his color game and we got to talking.
His name is Artemis Morte. He’s 22 years old, which would mean he was learning to speak broken sentences when Ed Banger dropped its first release in 2003 (Fun Fact: Ed Rec 001 was Mr. Flash's "A Bass Day." Ed Rec 002 was Justice's remix of Simian's "Never Be Alone," aka, "We Are Your Friends").
Artemis was local, eking out a living working in the fashion scene doing something or other, and making music heavily inspired by the guttural, mechanical sound of SebastiAn’s early work under his own name (listen to it here).
Sidenote: SebasitAn was scheduled to play Ed Banger XX, but it was announced the morning of the show that he couldn’t make it to England, later cited by Busy P to an inquiring fan as having something to do with “passport issues.” Artemis was gutted. I was likewise fucking gutted, but holy shit, where were they gonna put him on the set list?!
Further Reading: Ed Banger OG SebastiAn Talks Growing Up on ‘Thirst’ LP: ‘A Bridge Between Hip-Hop, Rock, French Touch & Everything’ (Billboard Dance, 2019)
“I saw the original posting for the event on Printworks before they took it down,” Artemis told me (or at least I paraphrase), his teeth chattering from the gray London cold. “It said Justice was playing, and I didn’t have any money left after this event I put on for Fashion Week, but I said fuck it.”
“Where are you from?” Another dude had just exited Rough Trade, a tote bag full of goodies over his arm. He’d clocked my accent, and when I said I came from Florida, he beamed and said, “I came from Vancouver!”
“Another psycho!” I high-fived him, and he joined Artemis and I’s Ed Banger superfan pow-wow. His name was Christopher Williams, and he had me beat with a 15-and-a-half hour journey that would also last a short three days—and he came alone!
Chris, 40, was just like me. He was there when Daft Punk played Coachella in 2006.
“No one was excited about it at the time,” he remembered. “Everyone was talking down about Human After All on the way there. The festival was handing out tons of singles from it. I grabbed a bunch. I still have my ticket!”
Chris has been an Ed Banger lifer ever since. That’s the thing. If you were there for the Daft Punk tour, it changed your whole trajectory. People like Chris and I have been activated like Manchurian candidates to follow the French Touch trail wherever its beacon hails.
There’s something about this particular crew and their sound, and the energy it creates in the crowd that can neither be replicated nor understood unless you’re just *there,* and once you’ve been *there,* you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to be *there* again.
“I had good taste when I was young,” Artemis chimed in. “I grew up in a small town in England. I remember going to the local music shop with my mum, I must have been about 7. I saw Alive 2007 and Human After All and bought them because they looked cool. I’ve been obsessed ever since.”
“I was at Justice’s first tour in 2008,” I said. “The Myspace Bus tour, with DJ Mehdi. I have the cross-shaped tour poster framed in my living room.”
“I saw DJ Mehdi 12 times,” Chris said. “I was at his set at Coachella 2007. Busy P took off his shirt and gave it to me. I could actually pull it off, back then.”
We kept going tit-for-tat, comparing superfan notes, eventually turning our attention to the new Justice album rumored to drop this year and what we thought it would sound like.
I didn’t know these people, but I knew these people. We shared the same memories; spoke the same language. We’d all been *there,* and so we belonged to the same weird tribe.
I pulled myself away to head inside. I didn’t wanna miss my chance to get a t-shirt signed, but what I didn’t realize was that a DJ booth had been set up, and there was a whole fuckin’ party going on inside the store!
Busy P—aka the Ed Banger Records founder, former manager of Daft Punk, and all-around legendary cultural force of light-hearted party buffoonery—was DJing, and a ton of superfans were huddled around the booth jamming to Outkast’s “Roses.” I squirreled through the crowd (with my crutches) to get a closer look and sneak videos as he mixed into “Da Funk.”
This one guy in the front was waving a Flat Eric puppet in the air. I was exhausted and fucked up and an ocean away from home, but I had fucking made it. I was *there.*
“I tried to check-in to my hotel earlier.” This guy Michael told me about his own journey to get *there* from northern England. “There was no one at the front desk, and the sign said ‘back in five minutes.’ I waited 25 minutes, then I said ‘fuck it,’ threw my bags on the other side of the desk, told the people in line behind me, ‘right, please don’t steal my shit. Tell the desk clerks my name is Michael, and I’ll be back later.’”
“Wait,” I asked, “like just now?”
“Yeah, and then I came here!”
Gaspard of Justice took over the decks and dropped his remix of Parcel’s “Somethinggreater” with Victor Le Masne. Nice-guy Busy P told me I could sit on the stage riser since, you know, I was in a crowd on crutches.
Myd came to play a few songs, while Michael from northern England added me to a WhatsApp group chat for folks from the r/EdBangerRecords page, telling me about a pub meet-up down the street from Printworks.
Feadz dropped 2LiveCrew’s “Me So Horny” while I absolutely lost my shit, then I had to hurry up and force every DJ in the building to sign the Ed Banger 18-year Anniversary t-shirt I’d brought with me, including So Me and DJ Falcon! AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I met another guy named Max at the signing counter. He came from Germany and got everyone to sign his jean jacket. It was an authentic MTV Headbanger’s Ball staffer item from 1992 (Ed Banger got its name from Headbanger’s Ball) which Max has covered in DIY patches.
Further Reading: Busy P Talks Ed Banger’s Past, Present & Future, Shares ‘Ed Rec 100’ Compilation: Exclusive (Billboard Dance, 2017)
Max was coming to the show with a group of close-knit friends, all of whom he’d met on the internet because of Ed Banger, either on blogs or forums, even eBay. It reminded me of all the friends I’ve made because of this music, the way I never felt like I truly belonged until I stumbled on this sound and these people.
Damn it, Max! You had me crying in the record store!
“This is what I love, the power of music bringing us together. Where else do you find this?,” he said as we stared teary-eyed at the long line of people waiting to get their records signed. “It’s got a religious aspect to it, like going to Mecca. The Justice cross is not for no reason.”
I was absolutely soaring as I left Rough Trade. I’d already cried twice and refreshed my cup of togetherness with enough love and mutual understanding to get me through the next U.S. election cycle (I hope?)—and you’re telling me that was just the freakin’ warm up!
A few hours later, my friends and I were posing for a picture in front of the Printworks sign, mentally preparing ourselves for eight hours of non-stop musical magic.
Firstly, let me just say that Printworks provided us with the absolute best nightclub experience of our lives to date (and I’ve been nightclubbing around the world since 2005, so that’s fuckin’ saying something).
I reached out a week in advance to get accessible seating, and the staff was kind enough to give me +2 for the area, so my friends and I who traveled all the way from Miami didn’t have to split up. “That’s more important,” the check-in lady said, and every single staffer we met from then on was just the friendliest, most patient and helpful professional one could ask for.
When you go to Printworks with a bum leg, they let you use a staff elevator to move up and down between the venue’s three levels. Interestingly, that takes you right past the artist green room, so I kept running into industry friends and acquaintances as if I were VIP, lol.
(We definitely spent two hours convinced we’d run into Thomas Bangalter, but it didn’t turn out to be true. Still the most exciting two hours of my life!)
The night began with a set from DJ Mehdi’s son Neil Essadi, who I unfortunately only got to catch the end of, though it sounded like he delivered a super groovy house set, capped with Oliver $'s "Doin Ya Thing” and its famous Moodymann sample.
He was followed by So Me, Ed Banger’s resident graphic designer who created the label’s most iconic logos, music videos and all-around visual vocabulary. I didn’t know what to expect from him musically, but he delivered one of my favorite sets of the night, dropping every late 2000s bloghouse banger from Fake Blood’s “Mars” to the Crookers remix of “Day N Night.”
Printworks, by the way, is absolutely cavernous. The main room is a long, shot-gun runway with two second-floor balconies running along both the right and left sides. The handicapable area we sat in was as far forward on the right as you could get before running into the front-of-house.
Before becoming a nightclub in 2017, the building served as the printing press for the Daily Mail and Evening Standard. It’s actually scheduled to close after this year’s season, so this show was part of its big finale blowout. What a loss a closed-down Printworks will be.
It fits 6,000 people, and Ed Banger XX was totally sold out. The cut off to get into the club was 10:30 p.m. I’ve literally never heard of an admittance cut-off before, but it’s a great way to get ravers in the door and on the floor.
The DJ booth glowed at the end of a long hall, revelers lit up with flashing lights and ever-revolving Ed Banger logos as So Me dropped “Oh!” by Boys Noize and Mehdi’s “Pocket Piano.”
We ran into Max and his crew, the lot of them dressed in even fresher Ed Banger gear; and all the way at the front, just like at Rough Trade, Flat Eric could be seen held high and proud in the air, bouncing his yellow puppet head to the beat of Mr Oizo’s “Gay Dentists.”
Max’s friend Felix!
It wasn’t even 10 p.m., and I was high as fuck on tropical Red Bull and good times.
Busy P took over the main stage, a rig of moving lights descending from the ceiling to rest just above the reaching fingertips of dancers in the massive aisle. The iconic rumble of The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” put my stomach in knots, my voice already getting hoarse from screaming “yaaaahhhh” to every freakin’ drop of the night.
Security staffers flashed their lights in the faces of drunk girls who climbed onto their boyfriends’ shoulders, but there wasn’t much they could do to stop the ever increasing energy of bloghouse mayhem. As the song says, “To protect and entertain / In party we trust / Them other DJs ain't fuckin' with us.”
I was full-on ready to cry when Busy P dropped Cassius’ “I ♥ U So,” a song that brought me to tears even before the duo’s Philippe Zdar passed away in 2019, but the Ed Banger kingpin wanted to keep the mood high, choosing instead to drop Skream’s drum’n’bass remix of the all-time classic.
As it played, a megamix of Ed Banger music videos played on the big screen, bringing me to tears despite the manic rhythms as it unleashed a flood of memories; flashes of friends and I gathered around my laptop, watching and rewatching the cool kid dancing in SebastiAn’s “Embody” or screaming at the reveal of Susan Sarandon’s cameo in Justice’s “Fire.”
I can’t tell you the amount of times I sat in the dark of my college dorm, distracting myself from some essay deadline at 2 a.m. by watching the “D.A.N.C.E.” video and marveling at the shapeshifting t-shirts.
It’s a huge achievement for any label to make it to 20 years, especially a boutique label like Ed Banger that gives artists years of space to write their albums. Ed Banger has succeeded because its passion is self-evident, and that passion spills over into its dedicated audience, as does the kindness at the heart of the community.
Watching Uffie take the stage to perform “Pop The Glock” and “Tthhee Ppaarrtty” live was a full circle celebration. I can’t believe I spent three days hyperventilating on a couch, wondering if this flight would be the dumbest mistake of my life. Not getting on that plane would have been the saddest FOMO of my existence.
And when Busy P dropped the fucking DJ Funk remix of “Let There Be Light,” you bet I bounced that ass as hard as a person with one working knee can fucking bounce it.
I know, I know. This essay is long as fuck. But you need to know that Riton turned the second room into a thumping rave cave that seethed with the synth fury of Carte Blanche’s “Gare Du Nord.” You need to know that the Korean BBQ bao buns from Printworks’ food truck backyard were some of the most delicious morsels I’ve ever shoved in my food hole.
You need to know that the joy emanating from the dancers in the back of the room during Breakbot and Irfane’s set was transcendent and spectacular; and that the dude in the Danger jacket might have been the hardest flex in the whole building.
You need to know that Braxe and Falcon dropped “Debaser” by the Pixies, and Falcon and Bangalter’s euphoric “Together,” and Justice’s glistening classic “Audio, Video, Disco;” and you need to know how insane it was when I crouched in a hallway, exhausted, waiting for a staffer to escort me to the back elevator, when suddenly a woman’s voice asked if I “was alright,” and it turned out to be my Miami homegirl “Moki,” who proceeded to tell me she’d narrowly survived an AirBnB fire in Paris a few days earlier and likewise said “fuck it” to came to this exact party.
But more than anything, truly, you need to know that when Justice took the stage, the maniacal duo dropped what will easily be the hardest hour of music I have ever experienced and probably will ever experience in my life.
As they stalked up to the decks, two X-shaped cakes covered in birthday candles emerged, and the Ed Banger family gathered round to no doubt complete a ritual that promises 20 more years of insane musical madness.
Giant balloons came falling from the balconies over the packed house of bodies below, and when they popped, cascades of confetti were released to great surprise.
Justice started the set with “Chorus” and worked through a frightening and awe-inspiring assault of tunes, mixing the Pointer Sisters “I’m So Excited” and Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” with ear-bleeding hardstyle and mindfuck techno.
They played Iggy Pop and Peaches’ “Rock Show” while the whole front of the space melted into a giant mosh pit. Fuck sitting on shoulders. People started literally standing on each other, throwing their hands in the air like it was 2007 all over again.
They played “Hellifornia” and Reinier Zonneveld and T78’s “On Acid.” Michael Sembello's "Maniac" like they did when I saw them in LA last summer, but this time with way more moving lights and 6,000 people screaming the lyrics in an industrial warehouse.
Further Reading: Kat Says: “I Flew To L.A. To See Justice, And All I Got Was An After-Party In A $70M Mansion”
They played Major Lazer “Hold The Line” and ABBA “Voulez-Vous” and all these insane sounds that just don’t live next to each other except for when they do, brilliantly, under the direction of these insane motherfuckers who you couldn’t even see because they’d turned all the fucking lights off from the stage, maaaaybe the ghostly imprint of Xavier’s white button-shirt peeking out of the blackness every once in a while.
Let me tell you, I’ve screamed along to “We Are Your Friends” so many times. I think this was my 13th time seeing Justice, but honestly, it’s probably been more than that. Either way, singing along to that song with 6,000 people who give as much a fuck as you do is something fucking else, man. Goosebumps. Beyond fucking inspiring.
This music saved my life. I will follow this stupid group of Frenchies wherever they fucking go, come hell or high water-on-the-knee or whatever weird shit awaits my aged future.
Ed Banger, thanks for 20 years of unparalleled debauchery, high-octane disco, surrealist soundscapes and teary-eyed singalongs. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to hug perfect strangers that become lifelong friends. Thanks for creating a space that always feels like home, whether it’s four blocks from my apartment or 4,428 miles across the pond.
Thanks for daring to do your own thing, and for taking the time to cook up real art and seek exciting talent. Thanks for always leaving me windswept and inspired, awe-struck and invigorated; and thanks for giving me something worth writing about for literal decades, lol.
Thank you for actually being nice. Thanks for having the hands-down best fan base of all time. Thank you for everything. Thanks for all the fish. Thank you for changing my life.
Thank you for being *there*.
Yo, if you actually read this whole essay? Damn, dude. I love you.
If you were there that night, please hmu and let me know how it played out for you. Would love to hear about it!
I’m also gonna send a paid-tier newsletter later this week, sharing what I feel are the essential Ed Banger tracks. If you wanna help me pay off these medical bills, please, by all means, upgrade your subscription and join the inner circle.
Alsooo
If you have the strength to read any other features, please consider reading this wonderful interview of Fever Ray in Spin by my Tweeter friend Grant Sharples. It’s really interesting and tells all about their process and inspiration on new LP Radical Romantics.
You also absolutely MUST read my bestie and Cutie Club collaborator Zach Schlein’s major profile on south Florida fella and friend Nick Leon. His tune was named the very best of the year by Resident Advisor, where this feature now lives.
Also, while I’ve been in a depressed couch cave, I had a couple really cool interviews see the light of day, including this chat with Chicago house legend Terry Hunter for Output, which was conducted as long ago as last August but only got published in January. Insane!
As well as this really fun conversation I had with LP Giobbi for Spin in February. I spoke to her from a gas station just 30 hours or so before I fucked up my knee. I’ll definitely share the full audio as a paid tier newsletter when her album drops later this year. It was a manic chat, you’ll love it.
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
LONG ESSAY IS LOOOOONG. But I updated the playlists FINALLY, GOSH.
Until next time. <3
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!
Hi there !
Just found out there was a link to this place in the description of your youtube video !
Thanks for theses images !
Glad to see that you enjoyed the show !
( I was the lighting guy responsible of the Justice's (and others too) light show for this event ! )
Love this! Your passion for music is inspiring!