“Don’t Think About The Feedback,” Justice Tell All

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“Don’t Think About The Feedback,” Justice Tell All

There’s little introduction needed for French electronic music gods Justice. Their debut album ‘†’ has left an impression on dance music that very little releases can say have done the same. It’s hard to imagine how an artist could possibly build upon a record which is thought of as near-perfect by so many, but Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay have done it, twice. Their sound has evolved over the years, but their process, thoughts and goals have always stayed the same. With their third album ‘Woman’ dropping to some very immediate acclaim just last week, we were lucky enough to sit down with half of the legendary duo. Xavier talks their hopes for the album, their lives outside of Justice, and their position as veterans of dance music.

 

 

SR // So Xavier, today’s an exciting day. You’ve released your third album – how does it feel?

Xavier // Yeah it’s good! I mean it’s weird because in a sense we finished this record six months ago. The time between the moment we finished it and now is so long that you kind of almost forget you have an album going out, and finally it happens. But yeah we’re happy now to be able to share it with everybody and we hope that people will find something in it that they like.

And why did you guys decide to call it ‘Woman’?

We had the name very early in the process of making the record. It evokes very much a sense of power to us for many reasons. I guess the first reason is that we’ve always been surrounded by very strong female figures, so ‘Woman’ is something very strong to us. We all come from a woman, there’s this power of giving life that is almost a godlike power, and the symbol of justice is a woman. So all these things and maybe more mean that ‘Woman’ is a very strong word to us. It’s a sense of power that’s not the usual cliché of power that’s aggressive.

What did you want to do with this record that you didn’t do with your other two?

To be honest, nothing. We realised that there’s a continuity between all of our albums. Hopefully we get better and we improve with time, but it’s always the same idea of trying to capture what we think pop music is at the moment we make it. Although we are very aware that it’s very different from the pop music you can get if you go in your taxi and listen to the radio, it’s always the same idea of trying to convey the song and immediate emotions on the first level, and then to have it filled with details and a lot of things on another level. Maybe the shape is different and this one is less obscure than our two first albums, but we think that our system is more or less always the same.

Ever since your first album you’ve been using vocals much more frequently. What’s the importance of using lyrics in your music?

I’m not sure that we’d win a Nobel Prize with our lyrics anytime soon. When we write songs we write them with gibberish first, that I create together with Gaspard, and then we just have some melodies and everything, and then we write lyrics to correspond with that. We want them to have a simple meaning but hopefully not be dumb. We want to find something that everybody can relate to, something that means something to us and at the same time not to be too safe because it’s almost our mission to make our music larger and life, and larger than our lives, and the lyrics have to be on that level.

On that larger than life note, does the symbol of the cross mean the same thing to you all these years later?

Yeah it’s exactly the same. The first time we used the cross was when we released ‘Waters of Nazareth’ in 2005, and we made the logo and used the cross because that song was our take on such music, extracted of all religious things. There was this idea that church music is very powerful to people and very hypnotizing, and there’s a lot of people just looking in the same direction. To us, the idea of a group of people, a choir singing to another group of people and just sharing this uplifting music was one of the guidelines of this new record.

There was a rumour going around that you had started a label called Genesis, is that true?

Genesis is my company with Gaspard, and it’s not a label. Our label is still Ed Banger Records.

When you guys released Audio Video Disco you said it was like seeing an old friend with a new haircut. Do you think of ‘Woman’ the same way?

Oh yeah absolutely. There is this this French poem, and a quote that says, “she’s not exactly the same and not exactly the wrong person,” which is how we feel with everything we do, you know? Because of our background, even if tomorrow we decided to make a hard rock record or a rap record or anything, it would still sound like us making new music. So that’s something we can’t really get rid of, and it’s really hard to be satisfied or be complacent with always doing the same thing. We will never make the same album twice, but it feels like the core and the backbone of the music we make won’t change.

And if you could give ‘Woman’ a haircut, what haircut do you think the album would have?

The most simple haircut. You know where you just have hair that grows and you don’t cut it and you don’t make a hairdo out of it. This is the best haircut for anyone, you know. It’s a very natural haircut.

There’s always a couple years between you making records, are you constantly making music in that time or are you having some downtime?

Actually we don’t make music at all in our downtime. It’s really important for us to do nothing rather than to just be in Justice, because the time we take to make an album is usually a year, year and a half – two years, and it’s a very intense time of work. We get completely focused on the record, and then we go on tour. It’s very important between these to take a break away from that and to exist through something else other than being in a band. Just to exist. Having a family, having friends, being a citizen, and just being a human being.

You guys have been around for quite a while now, is it weird to think now you’re the veterans of electronic music?

Yeah it’s kind of a weird concept. Sometimes we speak to people who are younger than us and they say “ahhh I went to your first show ten years ago when I was in high school!”, and it’s a bit weird but it’s not a bad sensation. We feel very happy with the fact that we’re still making music with the same approach and the same intentions and the same freedom as ten years ago, it’s impressive to us. When we take a step back and look at it we’re amazed that we still have all the freedom and ability to make things the way we do. I mean when you think of the Beatles existed together for 9 years, it’s kind of crazy to be making music for so long.

Do you think there’s now an expectation of the music you make to be at a certain level?

It’s hard for us, because to be honest we never have any idea of what people expect from us. From the beginning, the music we made has always been very diverse. For example if I go back in time and look at our first three singles, that were water ‘We Are Your Friends’, ‘Waters of Nazareth’ and ‘D.A.N.C.E.’, they are very different songs. They explore different sides of the music we like, they explore the pop side of it, the disco side of it, and the more brutal and brash side of things. From this moment, while we gave ourselves the freedom to do anything we wanted to do, we also have this curse that whatever we do, there will always be a part of the people that will feel a bit alienated because it doesn’t sound like what they want. There will also be another part though will be happy because it sounds new to them and they’ll be happy to come on board. So yeah we know that everyone has their own expectations and we can’t cater to that, so we don’t take that into account when we’re making an album.

Where do you see Justice in 10 years?

We have no idea. We know that things change a lot, things will go much faster or much slower, or not the way we expect. Even in two years I couldn’t tell you what we’ll be doing.

That’s exciting though.

Yeah absolutely. I don’t think I’d want to know what’s happening in ten years.

With the release of the album you guys will be touring, can we expect you to come back to Australia any time soon?

Any time soon? No, unfortunately. I don’t think we’re going to start touring before 2017, but hopefully we will come to Australia yeah. It’s always been very important for us to come and tour Australia, and we really hope that we can come back at some point.

If you could give yourself a piece of advice before you released ‘Waters of Nazareth’, what would it be?

By total luck it was perfect the way it happened. When we released that song the first wave of feedback was kind of bad actually. They said the track wasn’t working at all. We even got to the point where we were thinking “oh damn what have we done?” We said it was a mistake for 6 months after the release, and then people really started to enjoy it and like it, and it almost became like a style of music after that. It was good that everything came together in a very progressive way. I would do exactly the same. My advice would be, “do what you think is good, and don’t think about the feedback.”

Thanks so much for your time Xavier, it’s been such a pleasure.

Thank you very much!

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