French supersonic duo Justice are back with a new album full of classic, radio-friendly rock gestures – and the big cross is staying, Xavier de Rosnay tells JIM CARROLL
I T WAS A YEAR of the French. Justice released their debut album Crossback in 2007 and that record of supersonic, dastardly soundclashes went on to provide some fabulous good times for the duo.
By the end of the year, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Auge found themselves playing to thousands in a tent in Dublin’s Phoenix Park with that big glowing cross of theirs out front. It was a scene which was replicated around the world as Justice proved to be one of the hottest gig tickets in the business.
When you ask de Rosnay about why Cross connected with so many people, he produces a Gallic shrug down the telephone line.
"When we recorded and released Cross, it worked, but we still don't know why it worked. We don't understand what happened. Because we didn't know that, we don't really know what people expect from us on the new album so we didn't have any expectations to satisfy, apart from our own.
"Remember that we didn't even know who Justice fans were when we released that record. We didn't know who was listening to Justice, if they were male or female, young or old, working class or middle class. To this day, we don't know what people like in Justice's music. If you say Justice to most people, they will talk about the distortion, but many of the songs like D.A.N.C.E.are not distorted. You can't think about what people expect or anticipate because you will drive yourself crazy."
De Rosnay and Augé had form before Cross made its way into the world. A 2003 remix of UK band Simian's Never Be Aloneturned that track into a banger called We Are Your Friendsand the pair found themselves in demand both for their remixes and own tracks like the high-frequency blast of Waters of Nazareth.
With a spate of copycats attempting to replicate the pair’s work, Justice’s impact was not to be underestimated. While you couldn’t move at the time for similar if inferior wham-bams of heavily distorted funk, disco, acid house and rave, Justice were smarter and brighter than the rest. They just nonchalantly got on with the job in hand.
Four years on, Justice are at a new place. New album Audio, Video, Discois a much different beast to reflect the fact that the duo have left the disco at the end of the universe for fresher haunts. The new record is prog by name and prog by nature, a set of songs which looks to FM rock for its synth-guitar cues. This time around, it's names like Queen, ELO and, yes, AC/DC who will be noted in the margins.
“We love that ’70s rock, but we love other music a lot too, like romantic pop music from the ’60s,” says de Rosnay. “At the end of the production of every song on this record, we added small hints of old music, but the backbone is very modern. To us, it sounds like a 2011 album. It doesn’t sound futuristic or retro. The small patches which we added are almost like a game when you add a touch which will make you think of something else.” Yet he acknowledges that these reference points are the ones which will appear in all shorthand descriptions of the new album.
“Perhaps the reason why people are referencing those bands is because of how we recorded the album. It’s very dry because we didn’t use many effects and we mixed the record really straight. We wanted the music to sound as if you were in the room it was recorded in. It has its own space.”
Many may feel that Justice's new-found love for such big, crystal-clear, unsubtle, radio-friendly classic rock gestures may have come about from the lenghty touring they did with Cross. Perhaps all those nights playing to thousands of people has fostered a secret desire to be Freddie Mercury, as seems to be the case on a track like Parade? De Rosnay isn't buying that one.
“I don’t think those live shows had too much effect on us when we came to write and record. The new album doesn’t use the same tricks we used on the live shows. The power of the new record is more on the emotions and senses than on the production or the way it sounds.” De Rosnay says the duo were a little surprised by how people reacted to Justice as a live act. “On our live set-up, we’re hidden on the stage. If we were The Police, the cross would be Sting, the bassist and the drummer. It sounds like a joke, but it’s actually accurate and true.
“When people react to our live show, they’re reacting to what they hear and not because of something we’re doing and they can see. It’s different and that’s great for us. When you go to a Justice live show, it’s like entering a parallel dimension for two hours because everything is exaggerated a bit.” What they also learned from touring was that there were no second takes.
"When we made Cross, it was not meant to be danceable or radio-friendly but that's the way it turned out. With a record, people can always listen to it, not get it, put it aside and come back to it again until they do get it.
“But with live shows, you have one chance. You have to be straightforward so we have to make everything simple and make sure it is instant fun for the audience and us.”
Such a pared-down, streamlined approach also extends to how Justice go about writing songs.
“Our first album was written in the conventional way with all the songs written on piano or guitar and that’s what we’ve done for this album too. The final touch is the only difference between the albums because the final touch is important as it’s the first thing the listener hears. It might be something to surprise you, but you will have to pay attention to hear it.”
De Rosnay says Justice are still “amateurs” when it comes to toiling in the studio. “We started making music in 2003 almost by accident, not knowing anything about the process of recording music, like production or writing. . . We believe that instinct is more important than knowledge. We may be experts with the few things we know what to do in the studio but those things are always changing.
“We’re not studio experts, we’re amateurs, we’re studio kids. That’s the way we like to make it. We like to keep ourselves away from knowing too much about things because it takes a lot of the magic away.”
The next step is to roll out the Justice live juggernaut and do some touring. Will the cross still accompany them on tour? “But of course! The cross is the main member. We’re replacable, but it is not.”
Audio, Video, Disco
is out now
