Thanks to Daft Punk, Coachella 2006 was a watershed moment for electronic music in America. The French duo’s rapturously received set proved once and for all that dance beats could translate into a performance powerful enough to match—or even dwarf—the biggest rock bands.
One year later, Daft Punk’s countrymen and sonic progenies Justice assaulted the senses at Coachella 2007 with a larger-than-life spectacle of digitized beats and interstellar imagery. Massive stacks of amplifiers flanked the bobbing heads of Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay behind a large, glowing cross (the band’s logo and the “title” of their widely praised debut full-length). It was the kind of excessive display you’d expect from Metallica or Van Halen, not the oft-cited “saviors of dance music.”
We talked to Auge and de Rosnay about making dance music to listen to at home and the many different ways to describe the Justice sound.
A while back you said that the album would be “lots of disco, given the Justice touch.” Do you still feel like that’s the case?
Xavier de Rosnay: Totally. We stick 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 listening. The best example is the song “Waters of Nazareth,” which does not sound 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.
How would you respond to Justice being called “heavy metal techno”?
XdR: We understand why people can think about this, and it’s kind of a cool description so we accept it. But the disco and pop parts of our music are as important as the metal part of Justice.
Well, here’s another term. What are your feelings on being called “blog house”?
Gaspard Auge: We just discovered it on Wikipedia. We don’t take it too seriously.
It’s been said that dance music is a singles medium. Do you agree?
GA: Yes, and that’s why we didn’t do a dance record. We never aimed to do proper dance music. Some of our tracks are being played in clubs by DJs, and that’s great. But we wanted do an album that you could listen to at home, not just a collection of bangers.
What kinds of records do you like to spin as a DJ?
GA: The DJ side of Justice is more physical than emotional, so it goes from Donna Summer to Lil’ Louis, Smith n Hack to ’90s rave tracks.
XdR: We play mainly electronic stuff. There are some tracks it’s hard for us to not play, but sometimes we have to give them a break for a while. I think the track we’ve played the most is the Fatboy Slim remix of Wildchild’s “Renegade Master” or “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes.
Who are some of your influences musically? You say you’re not big into techno or dance music in general.
XdR: They’re too many to be listed completely, but, for example, we are hardcore fans of Sparks, the Beatles, Parliament, Snoop Dogg and Steely Dan, amongst others. I don’t know how our music ended up sounding the way it does. But when we make tracks, what comes out sounds like the guys from Chic getting their asses kicked by Slayer.
Scott T. Sterling is a Metromix producer.
