Justice
†
****
So house feels a bit too campy, techno a bit too cold and trance a bit too, well, dead for you, but you’re not completely ready to disavow up-tempo electronic music just yet? Meet Justice, liberators for longtime dance-floor abstainers everywhere who’ve always suspected they’ve got get-down stashed somewhere in their soul.
French duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, new to the full-length scene but already much-hyped for their remix work and club-catching vinyl singles, squeeze the enduring elements from wearisome old subgenres to create something decisively new yet cozily familiar. It’s been labeled nu-rave, electro-tech and electro-house, but robo-disc seems more accurate. As in full-on, no-holds-barred robot disco.
If that sounds reminiscent of another pair of Frenchmen, it should. Pedro Winter, label head of Ed Banger Records, also happens to manage Daft Punk, with wild rumors actually surfacing that Augé and de Rosnay could really be Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter minus their famous metallic helmets (they’re not, FYI).
To an extent, † picks up where Daft Punk’s 2001 sophomore album, Discovery, left off, pushing the electro-rock envelope harder than Daft Punk’s actual third disc, 2005’s Human After All, while conveying a similar sense of wide-eyed wonder via tracks like “DVNO” and the children’s-chorus-aided “D.A.N.C.E.” The most immediate Justice cuts—“Let There Be Light,” “Waters of Nazareth” and the centerpiece “Phantom”/“Phantom Pt. II” combo—meanwhile, pulse with an irritable euphoria, seemingly equally capable of dissolving into fuzzy distortion as they are of impelling listeners’ heads to bob for three days straight. Even if you’ve never considered yourself a bobber before.