Justice
Audio, Video, Disco

THE REVIEW

The Justice made me reassess dance music. Their energy, unleashed by the imposing alternation of keyboards, distorted basses, and pounding drums, which at first glance seemed harsh to me, involved me like a mosh pit at a metal concert.

The remixed versions from the live album A Cross the Universe confirmed my impressions. For those who may not know, Justice is a French DJ duo who released We Are Your Friends in 2006, a remix of Simian's song Never Be Alone. The following year, they released their debut album (Cross) for Ed Banger Records, a French electronic music label managed by Daft Punk's manager, Pedro Winter aka Busy P. Gaining success worldwide, Justice decided to take some time off to work on their new album, which is what I'm about to review. Preceded by two singles (the splendid Civilization and the mediocre title track that features a lengthy single-shot sequence in the video), Audio, Video, Disco (from the Latin I hear, I see, I learn) marks a sharp turn for the duo towards vintage rock sounds, which surprised and somewhat disappointed the fans who were expecting a Cross 2. And if the second album is always the hardest in an artist's career, Justice didn’t do too badly. Comparing them to Daft Punk, as all critics do in reviews dedicated to Justice, one might liken this to Discovery. In fact, both look to the past and the probable citation of their individual musical idols. While Daft Punk looked to funk, dance, and Moroder and Cerrone's Italo disco, Justice now looks to progressive rock, to Yes and Brian May's endless solos (and again to Moroder, why not?). Audio, Video, Disco features several sung tracks more than their debut, but the most successful ones are undoubtedly the purely instrumental ones.

If the imposing Horsepower wavers between an interesting orchestral composition and a B-series TV show theme, the central pivot of the album is Canon, preceded by a prologue with an almost medieval flavor, which presents instrumental evolutions never reached by the group in question, leaving the listener thrilled as keyboards and guitars virtuously soar over high notes phenomenally. The vocal parts often try to emulate the Who or the aforementioned Yes, not always too effectively (Ohio, On’n On, Newlands). However, the dilemma I face is this: does this album warrant merit or not? Probably Audio, Video, Disco is more innocuous and won't have the musical significance that Cross had on electronic groups of the time like Boys Noize, Bloody Beetroots, or MSTRKRFT (even if here, in some cases, they lean more towards fidget house). In any case, it is a very enjoyable album, worth listening to.

P.S. Doesn't the vocal sampling in Helix sound like a cross between George Michael and Tiziano Ferro? What a magnificent featuring that would be. Haha!