Justice † by: Dan Grimsey Sun:08-Jul-07 Label: Ed Banger Year: 2007 WB rating 68 out of 100

Justice, are of course the Justice from Justice vs. Simian’s ‘We Are Your Friends’ fame. This is their first album, a banging affair in which they bring back the feel of the late 90’s big beat-electronica, French house-super star deejays here we go! Era – the era of Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk. Such comparisons to the elite of the electro pop world are justified though, since most tracks on this album are just as good as most tracks on Daft Punk albums.

In fact, † seems like the logical conclusion to Daft Punk’s second album Discovery with a mixture of party anthems such as ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ and ‘Tthhee Ppaarrttyy’, synth metal jams like ‘Aerodynamic’ and a sprinkling of melodic instrumentals made up of old school synth sounds. The value of this synth noise is that they only vaguely sound like the instruments they are supposedly based on, ‘guitar’ sounds that closely resemble the noise of a cat in pain and ‘trumpet’ that sound cheesier than any real trumpet ever could.

Like many dance albums, † is built like a dj-mix set. A dj mix set which is heavy of big party beats, and big dumb riffs, and when I say ‘riff’ I mean big dumb heavy metal guitar riffs. This makes † sound quite a bit darker than your everyday dance party album and its dramatic opening number ‘Genesis’ begins proceedings like a prophet of doom. Followed by the equally biblical sounding ‘Let There Be Light’, the apocalyptic message is hard to ignore.

Such vaguely unsettling anger shouldn’t be that much of a surprise however. After all, ‘We Are Your Friends’ sounded as much like a threat, as it did a celebration, a theme that seems to follow through into this album. Then out of all this darkness, like a sunbeam of pure party joy, bursts the hit single ‘D.A.N.C.E.’, packing all manner of retro pop references, from the Jackson Five, to disco, to ‘Hey You The Rock Steady Crew’, into a song whose collection of ingredients is likely to induce guilty smiles.

‘D.A.N.C.E’ isn’t the only attempt by Justice at inducing dance floor madness however. There are more, and they generally sound as though Justice have gone back in time and kidnapped Salt’n’Pepa or some other oversized brightly colour jacket, hot pants and Reebok wearing home-girls from the 80s and brought them back to teach the girls of today how to be sassy. In reality however, it is Uffie, who struts over ‘Tthhee Ppaarrttyy’ like the motherfuckin’ princess she is. The song is non-stop classic Paris Hilton-esque lines about being a hot bitch (“and at the club/ the bouncers recognize my face/so while your waiting in the line/ we just enter the place”), the kind of thing bound to issue a love-to-hate reaction from listeners.

Then it’s time for the Data-Rock-esque sleaze, and the god-awful lyrics of ‘DVNO’. “DVNO / four capital letters / printed in gold/while they’re shaking their bells/don’t need to ask my name/to figure out how cool I am.” Enough said.

The rest of the album is vocal-free, unless you count a couple of completely shredded and indecipherable samples. There’s the full-on hands-in-the-air trance of ‘Stress’, the tacky trumpet melody of ‘Valentine,’ and the fuzz-synth jam of ‘Phantom’. Not to mention ‘Phantom II’ where Justice combine the forces of both slap bass and a string section with funky effects, and the sliced-up wall-of-groove sensation that is ‘New Jack.’ The latter perfectly balances both Justice’s grin-inducing disco tendencies and faux-metal leanings.

Each of these tracks brings a new colour to the Justice palate, whilst still leaving the general sense of doom, gloom, and Armageddon that Justice appear to be aiming for. This is a sense that only gets more and more foreboding during the final two tracks ‘Waters Of Nazareth’ – another biblical reference! – featuring a spooky church organ riff, and ‘One Minute To Midnight.’ † may open with a track called ‘Genesis’ but the album actually sounds more like the soundtrack to Revelations assuming that the final showdown between God and Satan was taking place at the Big Beach Boutique.

† therefore appears to be a combination of two albums; a happy album full of tacky party tracks which have a certain charm, and while not perfect, are a whole lot of fun, surrounded on all sides by a Black Sabbath remix album. It’s an odd combination, it makes no sense at all, and there’s the sneaking suspicion that the tacky party tracks are just there to give the album some hit singles, but there are some banging tracks on this album, a hell of a lot of cut-and-paste madness, a scattering of melodic synth lines and a swag full of funky ideas. Daft Punk would be proud.