Justice

Everyone should be wary of pulling out the following two statements, but they fit Justice like a pair of $500 jeans: 1) If it's too loud, you're too old, and 2) Age ain't nothin' but a number. Given the hilariously horrified reaction that many in the dance music community have when confronted with the music of French duo Justice, you'd think they were two 300-pound rampaging Huns who sacked Berlin's Panorama Bar and made off with Ricardo Villalobos and Ellen Allien over their shoulders. Instead, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay-- high school kids when Daft Punk's Homework dropped over a decade ago-- grew up, like many a young Parisian, filtering hard rock (never a French strong suit) through disco until it sounded more Judas Priest circa 1983 than Stardust circa 1998. Their "new French touch," as the genre's being termed, actually feels like the caress of a sledgehammer.

Justice Ed Banger Party

Throughout †, Justice's long-awaited debut album, Augé and de Rosnay genuflect again and again in front of the Stations of French Dance Music: The metallic ripples of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's Crydamoure label, which once sizzled your ear hairs; Thomas Bangalter's Roulé imprint, and its champagne kisses and Chaka Khan dreams; the coke-mirror reflections of idealized 80s keyboards in Alan Braxe and Fred Falke's work; the tongue-lolling hip-hop buffoonery of TTC; Mr. Oizo's spritzing-sphincter bass and convulsing keyboards; and Jackson's OCD vocal edits. Listen to the Cassius-esque disco-twang of "Genesis" and tell me these guys are somehow dance-ignorant. But like two naughty schoolboys, they've got their fingers crossed behind their backs the whole time; one thing the duo is not is reverent.

Justice LIVE at I Love Techno 2006

Justice takes this history of the French rave era and blows it out by embracing 21st-century stadium-rock production. They squeeze everything into a mid-range frequency band so loud that the riffs on tracks like "Let There Be Light" and "Stress" practically cock-slap you in the face. ("Stress" in particular sounds like a disco-era string arranger came to an in-house orchestra with the injunction "make it sound like Emergency Broadcast System.") The drums on "Let There Be Light" and their big breakthrough single "Waters of Nazareth" are the rat-a-tat rhythms of electro scraping like Freddie Krueger's fingertips along the slimy walls of some basement dungeon. That's it-- engorged electronic riffs, dizzying astringent strings, vocal samples torqued to all hell, and nasty metallic drums. It's astoundingly unsubtle stuff and bracing as fuck, a decade's worth of French electronic music stripped down like a Peugeot parked overnight in a bad neighborhood.

Video: Justice - D.A.N.C.E (Version Finale)

Of course, if that's all † was, it would be unbearable for a full hour, and Justice's critics might have half a point. But the album's more varied than most folks will give it credit for. (Unfortunately, that variety also includes "The Party", featuring Ed Banger's abhorrent in-house female rapper Uffie.) "D.A.N.C.E."-- the album's slightly incongruous, Schoolhouse Rock-esque filter-disco track-- is Justice's only obvious stab at a capital-p pop crossover hit and you'll certainly be humming "Do the D-A-N-C-E, 1-2-3-4-5" whether you want to or not after hearing it. But like Homework, † is a harsh and mostly instrumental set that nonetheless plays like the ideal crossover electronic-pop record. Justice knows how to sequence a dance album to avoid drag and boredom, a skill more suited to hook-friendly architects than a putative demolition crew. The wistful instrumental vignette "Valentine", coming after the one-two slap of "Phantom Pt. 1" and "Phantom Pt. 2", is like a sour, palate-cleansing appetizer between fat-rich courses in big ol' French meal.

Video: Justice vs. Simian - We Are Your Friends

But well-sequenced or not, † is also a sensation-for-sensation's-sake record, something French house has always excelled out-- even when it's been more classy than crass. Cheekily disregarding so many things that good dance music is "supposed" to have-- especially, you know, bass-- and in a post-microhouse era where "quality sound design" is a fetishistic obsession, Justice's digital distortion, 128kb-grade hyper-compression, and sometimes aggressively un-funky house sprays good taste with its pissed-up, pissed-off 3 a.m. musk. They've somehow managed to split dance music into a brother-against-brother battle, turning message boards into minefields and blog posts into mini-manifestos. There's no mystery to Justice tracks, true. But whether it's deep house revelers out of their heads on jacked-up gospel or folks in German basements getting down to their own form of minimalized riffing, club rats all over the world are just trying to have a good time. Even if Justice is more about throwing devil horns than doing the hustle, well, we're all still in the same gang.
Source: Jess Harvell at Pitchfork Media

http://www.myspace.com/justicepourvous