And Justice for all
Comprising Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, Justice take pride in not looking like pop stars, a luxury afforded to those blessed with louche Gallic good looks, but there is a point to their self-effacement.
Daft Punk exploded across the pop firmament with their own mystique. With their robot masks, Daft Punk looked like they beamed down from another planet.
Justice have no such pretensions. They do not have their own little universe — they are just like you and me. That is their mystique, their appeal.
The word ‘fun’ is said several times in conversation with de Rosnay. “We never thought about what we were doing and we still don’t think about what we do,” he says. “We just do things that we find fun and interesting and natural to us. And we never thought of what could be or what we would do.”
De Rosnay is the shorter off the two: Augé is tall and flamboyant, with Frank Zappa hair and a ’70s porn-star moustache. De Rosnay looks more intense. He is modest and polite. Asked about their growing popularity, he offers a bewildered shrug.
Their music has been described as ‘techno metal’, and it has surely defined the sound of a generation, encapsulating nu rave bands such as Klaxons and Simian Mobile Disco, and blending influences from ’70s disco to Michael Jackson to Metallica.
It was said, when they met, that Augé was into metal and de Rosnay was into rap, but de Rosnay says there were no musical boundaries between them and that is how they bonded.
“We were just listening to pop music in general. And in the ’90s, rap was pop music and hard rock was too, you know. We were both listening to a lot of different music already.
“Sometimes, you just meet someone and you become friends and see what happens. We became friends quite quickly and started to make music together and we made our first track a couple of weeks after we met,” he says.
That track was Never Be Alone, their unofficial remix of the British band Simian’s song We Are Your Friends, with its Richter scale-worrying chorus.
The track got them noticed by Pedro Winter, the owner of the influential record label Ed Banger, and Daft Punk’s manager. Justice have been the label’s most successful signing, but they also were a perfect fit for Banger’s pursuit of all things loud, funky and distorted.
Justice released an official remix of We Are Your Friends in 2006, and got their name out with other singles such as Waters Of Nazareth and Phantom, songs that have become ubiquitous.
By the time they released their debut album, in 2007, recognisable by its † logo title, Justice had become one of the most hyped bands to emerge from France. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for best electronic/dance album.
One of the album tracks, Stress, gained notoriety through its YouTube video, which featured marauding black youths wreaking havoc around Paris. To further seal the deal, they raised the ire of Kanye West, who publicly threw a strop at the MTV Europe Music Awards when his typically over-the-top video for Touch The Sky was passed over in favour of Michel Gondry’s quirky offering for We Are Your Friends.
Being a duo, and being electronic, they began to draw comparisons with Daft Punk. While both acts love similar music, Justice saw kinship with artists who mash up dance, rock and electronic music styles, but they don’t see themselves as spearheading a genre.
“We were playing a lot with Erol Alkan and 2ManyDJs,” says de Rosnay, “so they showed us a lot of things and they shared a lot of their experience with us. It was great to have those guys as teachers, but we don’t know if it was a scene. I think it was more like friendship than a musical thing, really.”
Nor are they bothered about any comparisons with Daft Punk or other French acts. “No, because sometimes it’s true,” he says with native insouciance. “It’s true that we are French. A lot of people are on the French music scene, as well, and we’ve been playing with them a lot and doing a lot of things with them. So, no, it’s not bothering. It’s just what it is: French people making music,” he says.
Justice are equally free of pretensions in defining their music. As their oeuvre suggests, they are not prone to introspective self-analysis nor to over-complication.
Did they feel pressure to create something different with their second album, Audio, Video, Disco? Not in the least, says de Rosnay. It was fun to make and that’s the most important thing.
“We had to change the songs of Audio Video Disco less to play them live than the songs on the first record,” says de Rosnay. “And it’s going good. When we do our live show, it’s really half and half of our first and second albums. I think it’s very homogenic and songs from both albums are being the climax of the live show. It’s great, it’s amazing.”
With their stage set-up of huge banks of amps, Justice have effortlessly made the transition from dark clubs to large arenas. Was there much of a challenge for a duo to bring that sound to stadiums? “We don’t really think about that, because what is good with our show is that we can play small venues as well as big venues. But, I think, like any band, if you’re lucky your music talks a bit to an audience, then you can be on stage with just one guitar and play a stadium and it will work,” he says.
The live shows are spectacular occasions, where audiences are more likely to be head-banging and making devil signs with their fingers than waving glow sticks. Just like the music, Justice fans are no respecters of barriers.
“We don’t have a type of audience,” de Rosnay says. “Whether we play a small show or a big show, we always see in the audience that people are really a mix of different backgrounds, ages and styles. There is, like, girls and boys from 15-years-old to 45-years-old. You have metal heads; you have kids that are more into electronic music. We have a diversified audience.
“Of course, we’re very happy that it’s diverse. We’re very happy. It’s dangerous to have a type of audience because the day you don’t do what they expect, they’re going to probably listen to something else, and then you don’t have anything left. We are very lucky.”
Is fun the central point? “I have no idea,” he says. “We know we are lucky to do things that we find fun and this is really a great job, so we don’t think of that and we don’t know if there’s a central point or anything. We don’t want to know.”
* Justice play Live At The Marquee on Thursday, Jun 7.
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