A classical orchestra playing the label’s classic hits. That’s how Pedro Winter, the founder of Ed Banger, chose to celebrate the label’s 15th anniversary. After a unique concert on March 31, 2018 at Le Grand Rex in Paris with the Orchestre Lamoureux, conducted by Thomas Roussel, the 27 tracks on the setlist were re-recorded identically for this anniversary record, which reminds us that the French label has produced a considerable number of hits. First up, we have three funky tracks by Breakbot, where the virtuoso pianist Gaël Rakotondrabe (collaborator of CocoRosie and Woodkid) and the 70 musicians perform the songs with palpable enjoyment – clearly they don’t often get the chance to play disco! Next up is Cassius and his hit I

Seemingly influenced just as much by Daft Punk's work ethic as their musical M.O., the hard-partying gallic hordes at Ed Banger records may be capable of some massively adrenalized, barnstorming electro-house, but they're sure in no hurry about it. In 2011, four years after Justice's watershed debut album, a follow-up from that label flagship was only beginning to appear on the horizon (see also Germany's like-minded Digitalism); meanwhile, the shadowy SebastiAn, who'd been issuing singles (and at least one compilation's worth of remixes) on Ed Banger since 2005, was just getting around to his first full-length. At least he took the "full" part seriously enough: Total boasts a staggering 22 tracks. True, a third of them are brief, spurt-like interludes under a minute long, and SebastiAn could theoretically have crammed almost another half-hour of music on here, but anybody not ready to cry for mercy after 50 minutes is made of steely stuff indeed. The experience is a bit like somebody scanning slowly across a radio dial, catching snatches of classic rock, soul, disco, funk, punk, metal, and even classical music (check the harpsichord trills on the delectable, too-short "Tetra," produced with Justice's Gaspard Auge), all with the equalizer settings permanently stuck on hyper-compressed bombast, and occasionally lingering on the static between stations just for the sheer agony and ecstasy of it all. Especially with the interludes ensuring a total dearth of silence between tracks, Total can feel pretty monolithic, and certainly, nothing here strays too far from the sort of scuzzy, overdriven, body-slamming rock-techno that's pretty much synonymous with Ed Banger, but there are some intriguing diversions along the way. Lead single "Embody" is a smooth, strutting, electro-R&B confection boasting woozily crooned talk-box vocals, and several other stand-outs feature a similarly soulful vibe, including the atypically breezy lounge-pop cut-up "Arabest" and the swaggering paisley chug of "Love in Motion" (featuring retro-soulster Mayer Hawthorne in a vocal performance so processed and mixed-down it might as well be a sample.) Elsewhere, Total cleaves to SebastiAn's more familiar, trashy, glitch-funk maximalism, including a few retooled old singles (the name-making 2006 spazzfest "Ross Ross Ross," the petulant whine and grind of "Motor") and a few similarly styled new productions. The most brutal barrages, though, come with "Doggg"'s screamo-disco and the fairly tepid electro-punk M.I.A. collabo "C.T.F.O." ("chill the fuck out," ironically enough.) Whether you'll want to cherry-pick favorites or wade through the whole unwieldy mess may depend on context (and your personal level of tolerance), but there's no denying that, a half-decade late or not, SebastiAn has delivered.© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo

Previously best known for winning the Disco Mix Club World Team DJ Championship four consecutive years in a row, French turntablist crew C2C brought their unique electro-funk sound to the masses with their chart-topping debut album, Tetra. Alongside the hit single "The Cell," and collaborations with Pigeon John ("Because of You"), Olivier Daysoul ("Who Are You"), and Jay-Jay Johanson ("Give Up the Ghost"), there are also four tracks plucked from their 2012 EP Down the Road.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

Here we go again -- and we've been going for a decade. Who would have ever considered the day that the extreme nature of Nordic black metal, both musically and lyrically, would become a yawn? Enthroned are warriors of black metal, they have endured so many membership changes (including one suicide) that they're near impossible to count. What's more amazing is that with the exception of one album, the critically lambasted Armoured Bestial Hell (their "experimental" album), every single Enthroned album sounds the same. Fans of dyed-in-the-hoof black metal will no doubt be delighted that this one band isn't selling out to the temptation of progressing musically. It's all here, the Devil, and Satan, and God, and Satan, and goats, and corrupted fetuses, and Satan, and did we mention Satan? Blastbeats that sound more like drum machine rolls than anything else, thin buzzy production, words croaked -- sometimes with a chorus-like effect -- celebrate the winners of the dark vs. light championship at the beginning and end of the world. Enthroned aren't terrible. They play their chosen genre with all the requisite musicianship required. They address all of its topics with requisite certainty; they play requisitely well live, and tour and make records in a cyclical way. The question is when it comes to not only the band, but the genre as well is, when did playing good old Nordic black metal become so ho-hum even when played well? Can it be that the music itself has become a rather bland cartoon version of itself? When there are other scenes inspired by the Nordic hordes that have developed this music in all sorts of different directions from the French scene (Alcest), to Tasmania (Striborg), the Northwest of the U.S. (Wolves in the Throne Room) to Japan (Gnome, Hakuja), shouldn't listeners welcome a return to the roots? Not necessarily. When it is played this close to the vest it all comes down to safety and a lack of imagination. And Enthroned is certainly guilty of the former, as well as the latter. [Tetra Karcist was also released with bonus tracks.]© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Previously best known for winning the Disco Mix Club World Team DJ Championship four consecutive years in a row, French turntablist crew C2C brought their unique electro-funk sound to the masses with their chart-topping debut album, Tetra. Alongside the hit single "The Cell," and collaborations with Pigeon John ("Because of You"), Olivier Daysoul ("Who Are You"), and Jay-Jay Johanson ("Give Up the Ghost"), there are also four tracks plucked from their 2012 EP Down the Road.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo