Justice (3) – †

There's an extremely sexy and remastered repress on gold vinyl from vmp

As a Ukrainian in 2022, I am constantly being triggered by the siren on "Stress" song.

The album which has changed everything forever. Then electronic music wasn't the same anymore.

Newjack samples "You Make Me Wanna Wiggle" by Brothers Johnson

When I first got the digital copy of this album, I loved it. I'd only heard Waters of Nazareth, One Minute To Midnight and maybe D.A.N.C.E. I'd recently got back into electronic music and was big into the Ed banger and Kitsune Maison comps. Justice's tunes though, were somehow on another level for me. In some cases, that can separate an artist from a scene (eg. Basement Jaxx), but in this case, their tunes were high moments in DJ sets.
A lot of albums by electronic artists I find can be patchy, with half the tunes being fillers, but this is not the case here. Obviously there are cheesy moments (D.A.N.C.E. , Tthhee Ppaarrttyy, DVNO), but that only makes the harder tunes even more effective (Stress, for example). Overall it's a great album. You can hear influences from 1970s rock and pop, to Kraftwerk and Moroder, to heavy metal, to score writers like Goblin, all worked together into almost a concept album. The sampling is for nerds. Tenebrae OST, the video version of Jocko Homo etc etc... Which really makes for interesting listening instead of the obvious disco loops and funk breaks.
...Then I bought the CD release. Looks great, as the underside of the disc is black, but what really blew me away was the sound. This is a prime example of testing mp3s against CD audio. The depth and clarity of the sound is just amazing. The mastering and overall production is 10*, even though visually it appears as a brick wall.
Comparing Justice to Daft Punk is pointless, just because they're both French and producing electronic music. They're worlds apart, apart from by location. This truly is one of the jewels in the crown of 00s best albums in my opinion and an important album from the whole electronic indie / nu-rave (I hate that term too) / Frenchtouch revival era of 2006-2011. A must have... And honestly, on CD (maybe vinyl too, I haven't heard it on that format) it sounds absolutely immense (providing you have a good stereo / sound system).

There is no question about who's better Daft Punk or Justice.
Both have one thing in comon:
Their following releases were not half as good as their debut!

I think people saw in Justice a group that sounded like Daft Punk, and then the hype machine kicked in and tried to make these guys out to be someone who they are not. This is an overrated album and there's only a couple of really excellent songs. Obviously, "D.A.N.C.E", and "Genesis". "The Party" is really cheesy, I hated that song. Too much wub-wub-wub, not too dissimilar from dubstep. In the end, I find I don't connect to this as much as I did Daft Punk's work.

This album is very...interesting. Justice's first album has a sort of, very unpolished sound full of radio interference that you'll really just have to hear to actually get a feel of what the album sounds like. It's a very unique album, but some of the songs are very..."Rollin' and Scratchin'"-esque. A lot of radio interference, with some melody. That's not to say all the songs are like that, as D.A.N.C.E is a pleasurable song, and NewJack, Valentine, and Phantom have that French flair to them. but Justice seems to have a thing with the sound of radio interference, and loves to throw it into their songs, which gives the whole album a slightly electro feel as well. If you're a Daft Punk fan, don't expect anything much like Discovery or Homework on here, Justice is just really, their own sort of thing.

Comparing Justice’s heavy bass and entrancing melodic strings to that of electronic royalty, Daft Punk, may be getting a little old but in their debut album, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, the hands working behind the magic that is †, create an enthralling composition of hits. While Justice certainly deserves the same recognition that the house super stars Daft Punk gets, the group is not just looking for imitation or following in the footsteps of techno giants. Justice brings a sound uniquely their own creating songs reminiscent not only of DP and Mr Oizo, but also stylishly blending in heavy metal influences.
The debut album comes highly anticipated ever since the single “D.A.N.C.E.” became an internet sensation (Justice has a large amount of success thanks to the youtube phenomenon). The rest of the album does not disappoint. Many tracks besides their break out single, including “Genesis,” “Phantom,” “Stress,” and “Waters of Nazareth,” are almost overnight classics sure to fill the walls of clubs everywhere.
The group relies heavily on addicting, distortion-heavy beats usually with sound clouds providing a solid background with which to work with. A good example of this is the track “Stress” which uses a repetitive somewhat melodic sound cloud and a fairly simple distorted beat to build up the song. However, the track doesn’t really get anywhere until about the three minute mark when we start to see a few more samples coming into play but the song pretty much just builds for the majority of the track with a voice sample to play the song out. While the group mainly relies on multiple samples from varying sources, it does credit “Phantom” and “Phantom Pt. II” to “Tenebre (main theme)” (from the film Tenebre) by Goblin. In Phantom, the score from Tenebre is sped up from the original and the bassline is distorted and manipulated. That along with a few other samples is the basic make up of the song. The group uses a wide variety of samples including the Childrens Choir from the United Kingdom in its hit tribute to Michael Jackson, “D.A.N.C.E.” Again, the bass reverberating disco beat creates a party atmosphere that is typical of the album as a whole. Maybe the most astounding part of the creation and production process is that the group used as many as four hundred albums for samples through microsampling and somehow found a way to make each of the dozens of pieces come together seamlessly in an artistic vision. For example, De Rosnay stated that “there are samples of Slipknot, Queen and 50 Cent, but they are such short samples no one can recognize them.” Microsampling should not, however, be confused with mash ups. The microsampling process takes a significant more would at blending sequencing the various samples than a mash up which might include as few as two pieces of source material. “Let There be Light” provides a good example of frequency modulation with the end result of a simple yet exciting melody.
Overall, a very solid album, although at times a little stale in its variety. There is certainly a distinct style that the group fully attempts to make its own. Do not expect the fame of Justice to last just fifteen minutes. These masters of their craft are here and they are here to stay.