The phenomenal debut album by Parisian duo Justice is a mixture of deep rumbling house and disco baselines, broken breakbeats and epic Wagnerian samples. They've created a Gallic house record that is at times frivolous and light whilst at others intense, gothic and vicious.
The concept for the album was "Opera Disco". Xavier de Rosnay said: "We stuck to our original idea to make a 2007 opera-disco album, even if we are conscious that some tracks don't sound like proper disco at first listen. The best example is the song "Waters of Nazareth," which does not sound like disco when you listen to it for the first time. But if you forget that everything is distorted, the bass lines are just really basic disco patterns."
There are a few feel-good party tracks ('D.A.N.C.E.' and swaggering 'The Party' in particular) but mostly the atmosphere is deep and dark, especially on 'Genesis', 'Phantom', 'Let There Be Light'.
Much of the record is their own composition typically using distorted and broken funk baselines and 80s inspired synths. Big portions of it sound like John Carpenters classic soundtracks.
There are a lot of samples are used but mostly unobtrusively and rarely are they obvious steals. You'd never know that opening track 'Genesis' contains lifts from 50 Cent, Slipknot and Queen.
One of the most apparent is on the epic 'Stress'; an intense and disturbing disco nightmare. It samples David Shire's brilliant disco version of Mussorgsky's 'Night on Bare Mountain' from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and turns it into the an inner city urban horror story. The tracks accompanying promo by Romain Gravrais features an urban gang of youths terrorising the residents of a Parisian suburb. It's like a scene from La Haine and provoked both ire and acclaim depending upon whether you viewed its depiction the gang members who were all of North African descent as racist or not. Personally i think it's not made with any racist intent and as many people have stated, it's over the top nature is more of a comment on how these kids are viewed and expected to behave by the media.
On CROSS Justice have taken the best of Daft Punk but delivered something altogether more inventive which evokes a deeper emotional reaction. Yes they can do uplifting hands in the air club classics but the also do nasty fucked up horror-tronica too.
STRESS
THE PARTY
GENESIS
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