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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 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.
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.
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.
-Jess Harvell, June 12, 2007
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/etjusticepourtous
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