By REVIEW BY EMILY SKEHAN ONTHESHELVES
Imagine a gang of Hell’s Angels, disguised as ultra-cool Frenchmen, storming a South Beach club and swinging from the disco ball. That’s the scene that DJ duo Justice’s debut album conjures with its relentlessly dark, eardrum-shattering interpretation of dance music. If anything could get a Metallica fan to shake his stuff like Paris Hilton on a Saturday night it’s this album, named in typical Vice pretension simply “†.”
Justice — comprised of Parisian graphic designers turned musicians Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay — meld acid house electro synth with gothic bass lines, slick disco beats and heavy hip-hop rhythms. The opening song “Genesis” merits the oft used Daft Punk comparison, a gritty, Godzilla-sampling intro that sledgehammers into an eerie, slickly produced dance track. While it’s disappointing that some of the album’s stronger tracks are from earlier EPs, they still rock with an irreverent, filthy take on French dance music. “Waters of Nazareth,” with its catchy drums and sarcastic eighties glamor filtered through hard rock synths, is a club favorite, and “Phantom”s glitchy, funk-ripped disco strings punctured by awe-inspiring build-ups and drops make the instrumental track hard to take off repeat.
“D.A.N.C.E.” adds a lighter, audience friendly touch to the generally dark album with a Jackson Five-esque singalong over disco pop beats that are infectious. Valentine is similarly less of a battering than the other tracks, sounding like a cross between Ratatat and My Bloody Valentine, if they were to be remixed by Tiesto.
The album certainly has its weak points; “The party” features horrific vocals from Ed Banger catastrophe Uffie, a female vocalist who sounds like a whiny private school girl who’s decided to rap semi-sarcastically about how cool she is. DVNO also falls flat with harsh, empty vocals and robotic synths.
On a whole, though, † is rocking, guerrilla warfare on euro house. A bumping, bad ass dance party. (Vice Records)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 12, 2007. Read the original PDF.