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Justice – †
Ed Banger

And so, the album arrives. A year after their delirious reworking of indie troupe Simian’s ‘Never Be Alone’ on ‘We Are Your Friends’ enlivened radios and clubs everywhere, French electro-house duo (where have we heard that before?!) Justice deliver big-time on ‘†’ (pronounced “cross”, apparently). What’s most striking is that it really plays as an album, not just a collection of club tunes. For a start, it’s concise. Secondly, it’s varied. Third, it flows. Though they claim to have fallen into this music lark accidentally from a background in graphic design, there’s a very real sense that Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Auge (such names!) know how to work a crowd, and not to shoot their load too early. Metaphorically speaking. Case in point: the monumental genius of ‘Waters Of Nazareth’ is the penultimate song, the pace and tension is ratcheted all the way up on the second half of the record to the point where it demands a climax. This track is it, and it encapsulates all that is great about Justice – fat, pummelling beats, evil basslines, vintage synths, kinetic energy, and some fearsome distortion. French house plays metal. And in the full knowledge that you can’t follow that, what rounds things off is simply a mellow reprise of a recurring theme from earlier in the record. The feeling of satisfaction, nay fulfilment, when it’s over is pretty special.