Justice Audio Visual Disco (Ed Banger)
4/5
By: Joe Daniels
Shuffling back into our consciousness with stunted single releases rather than a full-blown comeback of PR-fodder proportion, Justice, with Audio, Video, Disco have cemented their position as one of Europe’s most approachable genre-hopping electronic bands. Their return, after four years away since Cross first grabbed our attention, is something of an exercise in moderation, making the baying public wait until the band is good and ready, but thankfully it is an album joyous and exuberant enough to justify any liberties taken over its release.
With opening track ‘Horsepower’ living up to its title, and pounding the listener with it’s stomp-along beat, reminiscent of 70s cop show chase music, the pace is set. It’s a phenomenal way to start the record, and it’s entirely at odds with the restraint leading up to the album’s release. Next up is ‘Civilization’, a track with us for months now, which is somehow able to sound like ‘Baba O’Rielly’ and ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ at once.
What is immediately noticeable from the first spin is that this is a record indebted to the past, though this is not to its discredit. There are influences from across the musical spectrum: the odd touch of Hair Metal guitar on ‘Canon’, the Example-esque multi-tracked vocals on ‘On’n’on’, the Queens of the Stone Age-inflected chug-riffs of ‘Newlands’ – everything is thrown in to the melting pot of pop, from 1970 onwards, without ever sounding derivative. Indeed, what makes this album so interesting is that it isn’t any one influence in any one song that you can pick out and trace, like some sort of pop-archeologist, but the different strands feed off and into one another. The result is a seamlessly organic, though entirely rollicking run-down of what pop music can and should be.
The songs also stand by themselves, bereft of any snot-nosed historicism, so when the hypnotically danceable album closer, Audio, Video, Disco winds down, you’re left reminded just why you missed them during their four years in the wilderness.
Much has been made of the notion of this album as ‘daytime’ music opposed to Cross’s ‘nighttime’. Justice themselves have tried their best to stifle too much overthinking, but what they can’t stifle is the fact that this album stands up alongside their first, regardless of the hour.
Justice - Civilization by lostmixes
Artists in this article: Justice
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