Band Du Jour

By Joe Kavanagh

Although live albums no longer arrive with the same frequency that they once did, every decade has always provided several examples that seem to capture the spirit of their time, like some snapshot of zeitgeist in musical form.

James Brown's Live At The Apollo, Johnny Cash's Live At Folsom Prison, Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, The Who's Live At Leeds and even Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive, are just a few examples of acts at the very zenith of their career offering a musical interpretation of a moment in history, and to listen to any of those albums is to be transported back to the very moment they were made, like some living piece of history still capable of recreating the atmosphere of its time.

Another name was added to this celebrated list last week, with the release of A Cross The Universe, and its attendant DVD, by French duo Justice, whose emergence as one of the most compelling acts in the world is now all but complete.

In fact, like many of the aforementioned names and other great acts before them, Justice are not just reflecting the world that surrounds them, they are increasingly beginning to manipulate it.

There are many ways to form a band but spitting beer on a girl at a party is certainly a unique one, yet this rather churlish act was the big bang in the creation of one of the most important acts of this decade, as stated on the band's own official biography.

Like everything else about Justice, however, one must search a little deeper to find the true story, which occurred at a Parisian shindig, when Xavier de Rosnay walked into a back room to find Gaspard Augé laughing so hard that he was sputtering his drink all over a female companion.

Both raised in the suburbs of the French capital, the two men struck up a conversation and found common ground in the fact that the former was a student of graphic design while the latter designed flyers.

They also shared a deep love of music, with de Rosnay having spent time playing bass and guitar in disco bands, while Augé had played drums with various instrumental rock acts around the city.

Neither considered themselves an accomplished musician but, eager to create something together, the pair began meeting in 2003, where they attempted to cobble together some tunes on a Groovebox that they had purchased.

Inspired in general by acts like the Beatles, Parliament, Steely Dan and Snoop Dogg, their first effort at a song was actually an homage to 80s act, The Buggles, a band that both men held in high regard, and although the track made it onto the track listing of a local compilation, its next stop was oblivion.

Their second effort, compiled as an entry in a remix competition run by a local college, fared somewhat better in one of the happier accidents in recent music memory.

Constrained by the limitations of their sole piece of electronic equipment, the duo were forced to lift only part of the vocal track from a tune called Never Be Alone, by obscure UK act, Simian, and set about turning an indie tune into an electronic floor-filler.

Ironically, the song failed to win the competition but once again their love of parties would come to the rescue, when at a subsequent soiree, the pair bumped into Pedro Winter, head of Ed Banger Records, one time manager of Daft Punk and better known as Busy P.

On the look out for a track to feature as a b-side on another remix, Busy P signed the track and as reaction to the song began to snowball, it ended up on the a-side of the release and went on to become one of the biggest underground hits on the French club scene.

A year later, it received a wider release and dominated the floors of clubs around Europe, until finally breaking into the mainstream a full two years later when it was released on an offshoot of Virgin Records.

As Justice's We Are Your Friends, it would eventually sell over 50,000 copies and be directly responsible for influencing some of the members of Simian to go on and form their own dance floor oriented act, Simian Mobile Disco, who have enjoyed more success than they ever did during their indie incarnation.

During the time that We Are Your Friends meandered its way to the top of the club charts, Justice continued to write, releasing their first truly original single, Waters Of Nazareth, in 2005.

Far from the bouncing effervescence of their first effort, their sophomore single was a far darker affair that typified the band's willingness to embrace all styles and throw conventions out the window.

It nonetheless proved a hit on European dance floors and their fresh approach to making club music was viewed as a breath of fresh air by many music critics, long hostile to the innate pretentiousness imbued in most club music, and particularly its aficionados.

In fact, Justice have never viewed themselves as a dance music act, driven by rock influences and certainly more rock 'n' roll in their approach to making music and performing than most acts in the club music pantheon.

As their profile rose, names like Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim and even Britney Spears, came to them for remixes but despite such burgeoning endorsements, it was another stroke of luck that truly announced them on the global stage.

When handed the award for best video, for We Are Your Friends, at the 2006 MTV Video Awards, a furious Kanye West stormed to the stage in front of an incredulous audience, and ranted: "F*ck this! (My video, Kiss The Sky) cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it, I was jumping across canyons and sh*t! If I don't win, the awards show loses credibility. Nothing against you (Justice), but hell man."

The making of their album also saw evidence of their rock approach, as explained by Augé who claimed: "We never aimed to do proper dance music. Some of our tracks are being played in clubs by DJs, and that's great. But we wanted do an album that you could listen to at home - not just a collection of bangers."

He later elaborated further: "We tried to make something that was an experience. We wanted to do a kind of disco opera of a record, something with an introduction and an outro. We had a story in mind, and we were doing diagrams to find the right order for the tracks. It helped us get new ideas, because we wanted something fluent that you can listen to, not just an album of club bangers."

Their approach worked in spades, as evidenced by the release of †, an album of depth an scope that is virtually genre-defining if one could find which genre to file it under, as it contains the energy of a dance music album with the substance of a rock album, with elements of virtually every genre you can name thrown in for good measure.

They even had the audacity to release an EP, D.A.N.C.E., one month before the album, whose self-titled single was one of the most infectious songs of the past five years.

The cross symbol in the album title, which the band has adopted as their defining emblem, proves another source of mystery as they enimgatically allude to its meaning in interviews, with de Rosnay once claiming: "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." Augé's reason differs slightly, as he told an interviewer: "It goes back to 2003 when we started mixing beats together. We had the idea to try to turn a club into a church because it's almost like... the same energy. And we also think they both kind of unite people and move them in the same direction."

Whatever their reasons, the band has certainly created something special and, unlike most acts who are often surrounded by a phalanx of advisors and publicists, they are willing to show their ugly if it adds to the aesthetic, as evidenced by the recently-released movie version of A Cross The Universe, which follows the band on a 20 date tour of the US.

In it we see the usual debauchery associated with a touring act, but also a cast of compelling characters, Augé's drunken Vegas marriage, an arrest at gunpoint, de Rosnay striking a deranged fan over the head with a bottle and a host of other acts that would ordinarily be left on the cutting-room floor, once again blazing a path that others will no doubt follow.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the definitions ascribed to the word "justice" is simply "the quality of being just".

With their refreshing honesty, associated excitement and organic approach to life and music, a more appropriate definition might be "the quality of just being" and as we approach the end of the decade, this band may just provide the sound and style that leads us into the next one.