Justice

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Emerging from the creative cocoon that has enveloped them since wrapping up promotional efforts for their 2007 grammy-nominated debut †, Xavierde Rosnay & Gaspard Augé, the influential Parisian duo known as Justice, have announced the impending release of their second album 'Audio, Video, Disco'. The new effort is at once looser and heavier than previous releases, using the combined musical vocabulary of rock and electronic to conjure a laidback, brut effort existing on the outer fringes of pop.

'Audio, Video, Disco' was created in the duo's home studio, with all instrumentation performed by the group themselves.the duocrafted an epic masterpiece that exchanges the "night in the city" setting of their debut with an "afternoon in the country" atmosphere.

†established the group as an international force and the duo have responded with a huge album that panders to no one, equally at home blaring from a dance club soundsystem or performed in an arena. Don't be surprised when it finds its home in the latter.

Track by Track
Justice present their new album

"While making this record, we were sometimes a little afraid of getting overwhelmed and composing multi-sequenced tracks that would end up sounding like bad jazz-rock. We hope it wasn't the case and that it sounds like a simplified and modern sort of prog rock. We're not accomplished musicians or engineers, but it's an advantage when you're making that kind of music. In any case, we didn't attempt to make a club record, we're not sure we'd know how to."

1. Horsepower
"We don't write the tracks one after the other or even independently from each other and then put them in order randomly. Each track is part of a whole. 'Horsepower' was made as an opening track. We wanted it to sound like the opening of the Olympic Games. It reminds me of a car commercial I saw as a kid with horses galloping wildly in the desert forming the brand's logo. It also reminds us of the cartoon Cobra, which we watched around the same time, a Japanese-Italian co-production with a hero who had a laser gun instead of an arm."

2. Civilization
"We want the beginning of an alb to be welcoming. 'Horsepower' and 'Civilization' bring continuity with our last album. They're like a conveyer belt between the two albums. The singer is an Englishman called Ali Love who became a gay icon in spite of himself by releasing a disco-pop album two years ago. He sounds a bit like Prince. There are three different singer on this record, but it was important to us that all the songs could have been sung by the same person. We absolutely wanted to avoid the "featuring" vibe. To us, Ali, Morgan and Vincent are part of Justice on the tracks they perform; the process and hopefully the result are a reflection of that."

3.Ohio
"A tribute to David Crosby so obvious and sincere that there isn't much more to say. VV from the Midnight Juggernauts did the vocals. It's funny, he's so good technically that his voice is barely tweaked and sounds synthetic. It might seem surprising but 'Ohio' seems very natural to us and it's totally "us". We weren't trying to baffle anyone while making this record, even though that'll probably be the result. We naturally take new directions to stay stimulated, but the aim wasn't to reinvent ourselves. We believe that it's a bad habit that a lot of electronic music bands have of trying too hard to redefine themselves with every new album, although some manage with a lot of talent and success, but that's definitely not a rule."

4. Canon (interlude)
"An intro with a sort of medieval style played with three guitars. To be honest, the word "medieval" was part of the mental "brief" we had given ourselves before recording the album."

5. Canon
"It's simply titled 'Canon' because it's a canon (the musical form), like brother John for instance. one melodic line that gets harmonized every time it comes back. It's made with a guitar, and the scales superpose in a serial style. There's probably a little prog rock dimension to this album. We could easily have done variation after variation of the same theme for twenty minutes on a track like this, but we chose to stop at four to avoid people getting lost or discouraged before the end of the track, including us."

6. On'n'On
"This one is with Morgan Phalen, from a band called Diamond Nights that we love but went unnoticed 6/7 years ago. He lives inLos Angelesand we had him come over toParisto record. We wrote the lyrics with him and tried, as always, not to sound too stupid, avoiding clichés like "come to the dancefoor", but without pretending to be Bob Dylan either. Our lyrics are always a bit quirky. If they sound good and there's a little edge or something fun to them, we're happy."

7. Brianvision
"A Giorgio Moroder-style mini-symphony. To avoid sounding too 80's, we produced it with a really dry sound and a guitar that sounds like Queen. Hence the title, in tribute to Brian May, the guitarist from Queen. Originally, it was dancier, but we slowed it down and changed its key to give it a melancholic touch that we thought was more suitable for it. We love the sound on this track, it encapsulates the spirit of the album."

8. Parade
"The quiet moment before the final assault. On vinyl it would be the first track on the B side. A slow song with a lot of intensity. It reminds us of a summer festival or a banquet. It has a hint of glam rock, as probably does most of the album. We did the vocals ourselves, as we do usually when they're simple and don't require a perfect English accent."

9. Newlands
"Another one with morgan Phalen. It's a doorway to the danciest track on the album. The middle section is the icing on the cake. it could sound like a hard rock pastiche but we kept it light. It's about Chess."

10. Helix
"Another canon, maybe the only "funky" track on this record. We often joked with Pedro, telling him this would be the whitest album ever released on Ed Banger. It's another track with many sequences, that changes atmospheres several times.

11. Audio, Disco, Video
"It means "I hear, I see, I learn" in Latin. It's gonna be the second single, the one that's gonna accompany the release of the album. Maybe not the easiest one but due to its peculiarity we all felt it was a natural choice. Its runs at 152BPM, which is quite fast, but still delicate. It's also the longest track on the album. An ideal conclusion for the album and for our future live shows."

Justice: 'Audio, Video, Disco'
Release date: October 24th

Track by track review from The French music blog from 'Le Parisien' magazine written by Emmanuel Marolle
July 22nd

To say that there is a degree of anticipation regarding the new Justice album is a huge understatement. What will Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé; come up with following a debut album that spread across the planet, a hit song with 'D.A.N.C.E', and 'Stress', their aptly named controversial video? They have chosen to become more themselves, plural.
Neither electro nor rock, metal or funk or kitsch or trendy, but all of those things together. That is what can be expected from the duo's new album, out on October 24th, that I managed to listen to yesterday.

Justice talked about their debut album as "urban and nocturnal". They've described this new one, which doesn't have a name yet, as "rural and diurnal".

The first track embodies this change. 'Horsepower' almost has the same blueprint as 'Genesis', which opened the last album. Same intro in a crescendo, same explosion, same broken rhythm, or almost, like a carbon copy in reverse. Where 'Genesis' was nocturnal and electro, 'Horsepower' answers in great electric and metallic assaults.

Next, 'Civilization' drives the point home, weaving a thread between the band's past and present, showing the mutation in progress. Kneading the club sounds, torturing and welding them. Unless it's metal that Justice wants to put through an electronic mixer.

The duo played with their material before sampling it, digesting it and making the machines cough it all up. 'Ohio', the third track, demonstrates an impressive sound architecture with heady voices, a disco beat, and a feigned nonchalance up to a metallic rupture after two and a half minutes.

Always unpredictable, never settling for comfort, Justice builds up the pressure, like they do on stage, before radically changing direction, as on the fantastic 'New Lands'. It starts off with a heavy metal intro, which turns into a dance music anthem with high-pitched vocals, before tripping into Deep Purple territory, and carrying on as though nothing had happened.

'New Lands' for a record that resembles a lot of things but nothing one can put their finger on. 'Canon (primo)' serves as an almost medieval intro to 'Canon' that sounds like someone dancing on scrap metal.
'Parade' is driven by a martial martial beat, and soothed by ethereal keyboards and misty vocals. As on 'On'n'On', a pop crescendo of power that would make a great single.

On discovering this new album, I remembered the different interviews given by the band where they described their totally unaffected approach to making music, citing Georgio Moroder, Supertramp, Metallica and Timbaland in the same sentence. There's a bit of all of that in this new album, where Justice is just being Justice, far from the obvious references of their first album.