Justice - Part 2

“We definitely wanted to do something you can listen to at home. That’s why we were really focused on the edit of the tracks, because we didn’t want an eight minute edit with the same loop repeating forever. We wanted to keep ourselves and the listeners interested by adding some incidents. We wanted to lead people to listen to tracks they might not be used to by linking two tracks or three together. We’ve got some really pop stuff like ‘D.A.N.C.E.,’ and also more extreme tracks like ‘Waters Of Nazareth’ and ‘Phantom,’ and we wanted to make it easy and bearable to listen to at home – we wanted to make a dance opera that doesn’t freak people out. This is mainly to show what we really like about music and to blend all our influences. We didn’t want to do 12 club bangers, it’s definitely impossible to do something interesting that way. And we wanted to do something that would last a bit longer than just the club anthem of the summer.”

It’s fair to say they’ve succeeded. Expertly sequenced and startlingly varied, the album takes in brutal techno, filter disco, vocal-led electro-pop and the kind of tasteful bedroom music you might expect to find on an Air album. It’s a worthy successor to Vitalic’s ‘OK Cowboy’ in the lineage of great French electronic records. The crushing intensity of the noise present on certain tracks though (especially ‘Waters Of Nazareth’) is one of the most distinguishing aspects of the Justice sonic palette. Just how does so much distortion make it onto an electro record?

“I was a huge fan of heavy metal when I was younger. I listened to the classics – you know, Metallica, Pantera, stuff like that. But the main concern is to try to go to the extremes by doing very romantic stuff and also very aggressive stuff. We like to make ruptures – like in ‘Let There Be Light’ – it’s a very aggressive track and we cut it with a very melodic outro. It’s the two sides of what we like in music – energy and melody.”

And at the apex of the other extreme is ‘D.A.N.C.E.,’ the lead track on the latest EP to be released prior to the album. A joyous four minutes of pure pop, it contravenes the old adage of not working with children or animals. Nippers let loose in the studio can surely never be a good idea, but a chuckling Gaspard seems not to regret it.

Continue to page 3

Issue #51 - I Told You This Would Be A Good Issue

Featuring Biffy Clyro, Of Montreal, Duke Special, Frightened Rabbit, Cold War Kids, Jay Reatard, Pat Mills, and more.