There are certain things you tend to associate with the French. Cutting edge music is not one of them. Or at least it wasn’t up until quite recently. Things look set to change, however, as France continues to dish up the newest and most exciting acts in the field of electronic music today. Looking at the lists of breakthrough dance acts of 2007, it’s difficult to ignore the predominantly gallic theme that’s overtaken clubland in the past 12 months. Tunes such as DJ Mehdi’s I am Somebody and SebastiAn’s Walkman have gained considerable play in clubs across the world while Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. not only enjoyed huge commercial success but was also remixed by dance maestros MSTRKRFT. If that doesn’t spell success, then I don’t know what does.

This is not an entirely new thing. France is, after all, home to Daft Punk, arguably of the biggest and most influential dance acts in the world and a group who are responsible at least in part for the huge rock/electronic crossover phenomenon of today. We must not forget Cassius or Alan Braxe either who have been producing funky house since the mid 1990s. Asides from them however, most people would have been hard pressed to come up with many other groundbreaking French artists had you asked them a year or two ago. Oh how things have changed!

Walk into any club tonight and you will more than likely hear the sounds of one of the Ed Banger crew pumping from the sound system. Frenzied yet melodic, funky but with a healthy dose of grit, today’s french electro is noisy, brazen and in your face. Characterised by ear splitting treble, tight edits and 80s glitz, the dance music of today is unmistakably gallic and undeniably cool.

Sick of big name DJs spinning shit tunes to crowds of people too mashed off their faces to even notice, the French have taken matters into their own hands and the result has changed the sound of dancefloors worldwide. A far cry from the four-on-the-floor house and techno of yore, today’s electro is considerably more innovative, drawing influences from rock, metal, hip hop and funk. The result? A sound that is uniquely french and extremely cool. The difference between the Ed Banger crew and superstar dance acts of the nineties is that this lot really don’t give a fuck. The label is their own and thus the artists have little by way of creative restrictions. In fact, they have none. Pedro Winters, AKA Busy P, founded the label in 2003 with the aim of creating the type of music that he himself wanted to hear when he went out. Long time manager of Daft Punk, Winters felt that electronic music had lost the plot a bit somewhere along the way and wanted to reinstate the fun, the noise and the colour in dance culture. He has been successful in doing so. Boasting acts such as Justice, Mr.Oizo, SebastiAn, Uffie and Feadz, Ed Banger is home to some of the biggest rising stars of today. And it’s not just the ravers who are taking notice. Indie kids, perhaps bored by the increasingly homogenised rock scene have started turning to electronic music, kicking off their converse in favour of high top fluoro trainers and finally learning to dance. This movement, dubbed “Rock ‘n’ Rave” by mixmag, is lead by DJs such as Erol Alkan, a fan of the Ed Banger lot since the very beginning. Alkan himself readily admits that his roots lie in the world of indie, and notes that today’s generation can’t relate to the rave culture of the nineties, as they simply weren’t there. This is where Busy P et al come in. Having grown up around trash metal themselves, they are now producing a bizarrely danceable type of cacophony, never heard before in clubs or indeed anywhere else.

The Ed Banger crew are innovative in that they are fusing genres which have traditionally been considered at opposite ends of the musical spectrum, and therefore creating a sound that is utterly unique. Fancy a bit of disco metal? Try Rainbow Man by Busy P. Feel like a little electro-hop? Check out Uffie and her mates TTC. Their music is recklessly fun, sticking two fingers up at the corporatisation of dance music and as such giving a voice to youth culture. Clubbers are tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. So are DJs. The music coming from France is now remedying this fatigue as dance music is returning to what it was originally supposed to be; music you can shake your thang to.

The strange thing about this gallic movement is that the French themselves are taking very little notice of it. Despite the fact that the Ed Banger and Kitsuné collectives are getting people dancing again on this side of Europe and indeed across the pond in the US, the French themselves are remaining unusually blasé about the whole thing. The reaction of both the French press and public towards their new wave of superstar DJs has been surprisingly lukewarm and the majority of Ed Banger’s parties are held outside of their homeland. Not that they’ve much to worry about though, having received extremely positive feedback from fans and critics alike in the press and in internet forums in recent times. These guys seem are on to a good thing and show no signs of packing up soon. With most of their artists due to release something in 2008 and their live shows gaining quite a reputation amongst today’s generation of clubbers, it seems these these guys have cracked the code and brought dance music back to its roots. They are making noise funky again, making sweat drip from the ceilings of clubs all over the world and amazingly, not taking themselves to seriously while doing so. Having already made their mark on the club scene in 2007, the French show no signs of retreating and luckily so. Clubs would be a hell of a lot duller without them.

Olwyn Fagan enjoys fashion hair and pounding, pounding techno music.
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