Justice

One Liner: Old school electronic dance party

Wikipedia Genre: French house, electro house, funky house, nu-disco, electronic rock, electroclash, alternative dance.
Home:  France

Poster Position: 3
Day: Saturday at 8:30
Both Weekends

Thoughts: These guys have been around for a long time, as far as electronic bands go.  Their big hit, still their most popular track on Spotify, came out on their eponymous 2007 album (well, sort of eponymous, see discussion further down).  For them to still rate top billing on a major festival is impressive.  You likely remember that old hit, even I do, and I don't track the electronic world at all.  At 63 million streams, this is "D.A.N.C.E."

Good tune.  Groove so deep you just have to dance.  So, this is the old school style of electronic music, right?  I guess that is called "house?"  More like the Daft Punk style, where they create good, funky beats, and then let them spool out.  As opposed to the aggressive EDM stuff.  Although some of these tunes definitely get aggressive in a kind of buzzing way.

I honestly grinned a little while ago while running through their most recent album (2016's Woman), and told myself that I really like this stuff.  I know I'm usually anti- electronic stuff, but I am a lover of the funky shit, and most of these tunes have a nice low end and groovy feel.  It's not perfect - "Heavy Metal" and "Chorus" are annoying - but much of that album and their other tunes are pretty fun.  And then you get to their most recent live album - 2013's Access All Arenas - and you can really start to feel the flavor for why this would be a cool live show.

That is like an hour, so I get it if you aren't going to do the whole thing, but just let the first song (the 7:45 long "Genesis") wash over you and see if you might just want to bounce around in a big crowd to that for an hour.  Yes?  Oui.  WHO's WITH ME?  I'll admit to feeling the need to freak out when they turned the little kid voices from D.A.N.C.E. into a trippy version of Jay-Z's "On the the Next One."  After finishing that whole live album for the second time just now, I'm in.  This seems like my destiny.

The group is two dudes, with the exceedingly, richly, amazingly French names of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay.  Just try to say those names without it sounding like you eat fine pate and drink the bubbliest champagne.  Like other electronic dudes, they came up making remixes of other people's songs, before "D.A.N.C.E." hit and they became famous in their own right.  Huh. apparently that first album, which Spotify lists as being called Justice, is actually named ♰.  Like the Prince symbol name, but a cross.  They use crosses frequently on their covers.  "Asked in an interview whether their cross-based themes had received any negative feedback, De Rosnay said, "Eighty percent of France is Christian. My Dad was a bit uncertain and thought it was bad taste, but I was like, This is what I want to do Dad. It's odd because in America we have received support from Christian groups thanking us for spreading the word. We do not invert the cross and I suppose they think we look like nice guys so there has not been a problem.""  That is funny stuff.

So, after the album named with a symbol, they released a live album - 2008's A Cross The Universe - and then another studio album, 2011's Audio, Video, Disco, before that Access All Arenas live album, and then Woman.  Audio, Video, Disco made some news because they used much more real instrumentation in it, although its still pretty synth-y too.  It is probably my least favorite of these albums.  And the second live album is much better than the first.

Apparently, they are going to release another album before their show this fall, with yet another live album out in August.  Seems to be their pattern, follow every studio album with a live album.  Shows how good their live shows must be - I hope so, because I think I've been won over.

I'll give you one more track, this one is a 2018 single, so maybe it is going to be on the new album when that one drops.  "Stop (WWW)" currently has 655k streams, so it isn't that popular yet, but it apparently released on May 7, so that is less than a month's worth of plays.

A little slower, kind of plodding.  Not nearly as cool as their prior stuff, and with the feel-good, come-together lyrics, seems a little cheese.  Not their best song.

That being said, I think I'm in to give this a shot, so long as they aren't up against something else big.