The French electronic duo just wanna make you feel. They

kicked off a high profile North American tour last weekend.

BY A.D. AMOROSI

One doesn’t

immediately think of serious issues when considering Justice. France’s arena

rock-worthy electronic duo – Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – have spent a

decade refining their compressed distorted synth sound and choppily cut bass

lines for maximum dance floor effect. Certainly their hard dark first album

(the cross symbol †) and their latest release,

the softer sunnier Audio, Video, Disco,

both benefit from big bass and rock grandeur with but the sonorousness of

quietude to set them elegantly apart.

Yet, several weeks before the new

album is set to drop, reality sets in and the pair must consider the life

cycle. First, their close buddy DJ Mehdi passed away in September, killed in a

freak accident during a roof collapse. A little over one week after that, de

Rosnay and his girlfriend had a baby daughter, which sent Augé scurrying to London to be with the happy trio after the

birth.

“So far, we’re

good,” says Augé, his thick accent and friendly demeanor most prominent as he

talks about the light stuff of readying a live show that promises to be as

boldly unique as the tour following †’s release (and documented on the live DVD

A Cross the Universe). Push a

little bit more, something personal about his tumultuous month and his insight

into the circle of life trailing behind him, and he stiffens quickly. “I don’t

know… it is for me… nothing to comment about,” he says solemnly.

Shifting gears

quickly, this writer mentions how the decade of being Justice started with the

pair making tracks together for Musclorvision’s Hits Up To You compilation where each tune was meant to sound as if

it was designed for the Eurovision song contest. The compilation used two of

their songs, and one tune from Augé’s alter-ego Microloisir. Now that gets Augé

to laughing. “That was a pretty funny start,” he says. “It’s would be tough to pick one thing that

was so great about getting together. We’ve been

really joyous since our start and

I think that reflects on our

music.” One thing he does focus on was the first time

the pair did drugs together. It was mushrooms. “Now that was

a rich experience,” he snorts.

Psilocybin and dance

music aside, Justice’s gents are cautious careful types. After they gained

notoriety for the dirty 2003 remix of Simian’s “Never Be Alone” and

were immediately signing by Ed Banger’s label, it took four more years to

release the debut album and another four years after that to drop Audio, Video,

Disco. Augé claims that the pair gets drained by touring, doing tracks

for other artists and games and taking on the occasional solo effort.

“Actually, recording the new album took a year and three months, the same the

last album took.” Cautious perhaps not, but exacting, perhaps.

“We are never as

good as when we are together,” laughs Augé. “We just have to wait for the right moment.” Despite the

precise nature and hermetic feel of the two albums, the new AVD is far less so despite

its hearty level of programming. Once within the

walls of tracks like the epic

“Civilization” you can

hear the instinctual thrust, a raw-ness

at work.

“Thank you for noticing. It’s good that you feel it. We wanted to get rid of the production tricks, especially the ones we had developed on that first record,” says Augé, focusing on †’s

very distortion and overt compression that made it popular. The new thing is softer,

quieter and way more spacious than the crushingly electro-cramped first album.

“We wanted to make this record more loose and spare so to create a new kind of proximity to the music, for us and the audience. When we

make music, we are not over thinking it. We’re just trying to provide

something simple and with straight emotions. We always make music in a very naïve way. We feel

nothing for over the top anything. We want no parody elements in our music.”

Justice,

according to Augé, think of Audio, Video, Disco,

as a modern

pop record without tricks, one

whose main concern is to make people feel. Whether it’s a sensation of melancholy, happiness or anger, Justice wants you to feel

it. To an extent, this is why the duo decided to record the new effort in a

basement without scads of equipment. They wanted it to be homemade

music. “We don’t have elaborate demanding needs for

space or equipment,” he says. “We spent a few months trading

old stuff for new older equipment. We didn’t have sound engineers approach the music. It’s just us. And we don’t know that much.”

Augé loves the

fact that they are studio rookies. If you know too

much about something in their estimation it sounds like it.

The sound then is un-instant. “You lose some personal style and freshness

when you are too good at something,” he says.

The softer

quieter spacious arrangements of AVD was certainly new to Justice. They wanted

to feel the air in the room, the air around the instruments. In order to achieve

that the pair had to change their way

of writing and working. Nothing cluttered. “For first

time ever, we used short samples in our arrangements that

made something sound twice produced. We wrote in a very classical way on piano, guitar and bass. We

kept the tracks arid and sparse so

to add layers of harmonies.”

Justice wanted to

balance the minimal production-“less in-your-face than the last record, but still assertive”-with maximal music. Pointless as it was to

do things the same way as they had on their debut album, Justice ditched the compressed

distorted sound that made it their aggressive “night time” album. “Instead we

made this new one our daytime disc,” says Augé. “Something open, airy, romantic and way more about a

country side than a dark dance club.”

An edited version of this story originally

appeared in BLURT 11.

[Photo Credit:

Paul Heartfield]