Justice Interview October 2011 [Part 2]
By: Joe Daniels
The contradiction then is a misnomer, as their music is not intended to mirror its creative process, but instead to just provide hints at where it has come from, and this is another key to understanding what Justice are all about. They like their music to be ambivalent, to be composite rather than compartmentalised. It is not about any one influence (be it spatial or musical), but about a multitude.
It’s something de Rosnay – who has become quite the raconteur now that we are delving into the music itself – is keen to stress when I ask them what influences they drew from on the album. “Most of the music we listen to doesn’t sound at all like this record.” He then admits a personal penchant for late Sixties romantic pop, before concluding, “the way our records sound is more like the accumulation of our upbringings and everything we have passed through since.”
De Rosnay, now hitting his stride, takes on the common opinion that they sound a tad rawkier than they intend to. “A lot of people think that we are really close to heavy metal but what inspires in heavy metal is more like an idea of it, or images, two or three details, or…” “… Facial hair?” interjects Gaspard Augé, coming out of taciturnity with a wry smile. For one brief moment, Xavier snaps out of the interview and laughs with his best friend, giving me a glimpse of the aforementioned japes they had when recording.
He’s then straight back into it, picking up on the tics of Heavy Metal embedded in Justice’s sound. “Sometimes the way a guitar sounds is gonna make you think of something, and there’s a million ways of making a guitar sound. If you pick up just one thing, it’s enough to give it hints of influences, and we are more attached to these kinds of details than the music [of Heavy Metal] in itself. “
I then suggest a fairly obvious, yet clunky comparison of another French electronic duo, and it is – to my surprise – Augé who replies: “The main thing we are sharing with Daft Punk is that we do not consider any influence to be shameful. We are always more concerned with emotion and as long as an artist touches us on an emotional level, it’s more valuable than any so-called ‘cool’ influence.” More hints in the hotpot, details in the drawing, then.
Once more, the band seem fixated on this sense of multiplicity – of taking in any influences that, by osmosis, they have picked up over their formative years, and cutting them to wax for all to hear. So does this mean they want their music to be as far reaching as possible, with something for everyone to pick up on? “No, says de Rosnay, back in the driving seat, “it is just meant to be accurate to what we like in music.” He pauses, before elaborating: “As with Heavy Metal or Prog-Rock, we are always between the two extremes of epic-ness and melancholia. It is always the blend of those two things that we do.” He then affirms, with particular gusto, “It’s supposed to be something really masculine and tough but at the same time, sensitive and melancholic.”
My final outright question to them, and one most bands might worry about answering: is this Pop music? “Yes!” de Rosnay shouts, as if boasting how unafraid of answering a divisive question he is, before qualifying, “of course it has nothing to do with Pop music of today, but we say ‘pop’ in the sense that it is pretty and simple music, meant to convey really simple emotions.”
As conversation winds down, Shoreditch House’s coiffured clientele pile in around us, and de Rosnay asks over the hubbub for a coffee. In the short time I have spoken to them, I have managed to gather a sense of the dichotomous relationship Justice have with their music. They want to put everything into it, yet they eschew any claims of universality. They want it to sound grandiose and maximal, yet restrained, rehearsal-like, oozing the bedroom it was recorded in. But it is precisely these juxtapositions that seem to define the band, even as they sit here, in one of London’s most haughty members’ clubs, looking like they’d be more at home in Café 1001, five minutes away. Justice are a band that will avoid categorization to the last. They don’t want to be pigeonholed into a genre, they don’t want to release a single just a week before the album, and they don’t want to hang out in pretentious dive-bars. Instead, they’ll do things on their terms, and why not? They’ve managed to keep interest palpable even after years between albums and months between singles, and put out some of the most interesting electronic music in a decade.
Good luck to them.
The Audio, Video, Disco EP and Album are both available on iTunes -
Artists in this article: Justice