"...like futuristic beats deconstructed by cavemen."
— Jason Lymangrover, AllMusic.com
Justice, often stylized as Jus†ice, is a French electro house duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay. They have a unique style of electro house heavily influenced by funk and disco, combining cut-up bass lines with a compressed and distorted synth sound alongside bass slapping and influences from heavy metal.
Discography:
- † note (2007)
- Planisphère (2008) - EP
- A Cross the Universe (2008) - Live album
- Audio, Video, Disco (2011)
- Access All Arenas (2013) - Live album
- Woman (2016)
- Woman Worldwide (2018) - A studio album of reworkings of live tracks
- Hyperdrama (2024)
Tropes of Nazareth:
- Album Title Drop: The song "Audio, Video, Disco." from the album Audio, Video, Disco.
- All-CGI Cartoon: The "Civilization" video
- Alliterative Title: Access All Arenas. "Woman World Wide" definitely qualifies, too.
- Arc Symbol: A cross. One appears on every album or EP cover, the T in their name is a cross, and there's a cross featured in all their live shows.
- Audience Participation Song: Anytime "We Are Your Friends" plays at a live show, the audience sings along. Used more prominently in A Cross the Universe, where the only words NOT sung by the audience are "We", "You", and "C'mon".
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Former labelmate Uffie on "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy.".
- Bilingual Bonus: "Audio, Video, Disco" is at first glance a simply musically-inclined Word Salad Title; it's actually Latin for "I hear, I see, I learn".
- Calvinball: The music video for New Lands starts off as a Baseball game...Then quickly adds lacrosse, roller derby, and American Football.
- Coolest Club Ever: The subject of "The Party" and "DVNO".
- Epic Rocking: Planisphere is 17:39 long, if you listen to all its parts in order.
- Also, "Phantom Part 2" is over 8 minutes on both A Cross the Universe and Access All Arenas. On top of that, "Audio, Video, Disco." is 10 minutes long on Access All Arenas
- Fading into the Next Song: Cross has tons of these. The only real song breaks are after "D.A.N.C.E.", "Newjack", "Phantom Part 2", "DVNO", and "Stress"
- And while Audio, Video, Disco. doesn't have nearly as many as Cross, "On'n'On" and "Brianvision" fade into each other, as well as "New Lands" and "Helix".
- And of course, being live albums, A Cross the Universe and Access All Arenas both have all the songs fade into one another.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: The duo is usually seen wearing leather jackets.
- Idiosyncratic/Minimalistic Cover Art: Their main four albums just have a cross, not even the band or album name.
- The singles from Audio, Video, Disco all have the same stone cross, but with a different background.
- A Cross the Universe subverts the other examples by not having a cross, just the band and album titles on a plain black background.
- The singles from Cross, as well as Access All Arenas, also avert this trope.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: As stated above; A Cross the Universe.
- Lighter and Softer: Audio, Video, Disco was meant to be a "daylight album" when compared to †, according to Word of God.
- Limited Lyrics Song: "Audio, Video, Disco" and "Ohio"
- List Song: "Ohio"
- O-hi-o
Ten-nes-see
Ca-li-for-nia
End-less-ly
- Live Album: As stated above, A Cross the Universe and Access All Arenas.
- Looped Lyrics: "Audio! Audio! Audio! Video disco!"
- Also from AVD, "Ohio"
- Loudness War: This is the trademark sound of Ed Banger Records in general, but Justice take compression to its absolute limits.
- The compressed tone managed to go up to eleven with "Carpates", which sounds like something out of the soundtrack of Wolfenstein 3-D
- Lucky Charms Title: †.
- Mind Screw: The music video for "On'n'On".
- New Sound Album: † is gritty, buzzy electronic dance. Audio, Video, Disco is mainly progressive rock.
- The Oner: The video for "Audio, Video, Disco".
- Punny Name: DVNO doesn't stand for anything. It's actually a pun on the name, "El Divino".
- Retraux: The 2013 Live Album Access All Arenas designs its disc label◊ to resemble the ones used by EMI and its sublabels during the 1980s, right down to the font choices.
- Sampling: † featured samples from over 400 albums!
- Signature Style: Are you hearing electro house with blatant funk influences and distorted, chopped up pianos? You gotta be listening to Justice, then.
- Shout-Out: "D.A.N.C.E"'s lyrics make several references to Michael Jackson.
- It's fun to try and spot the basis for all the spoof Vanity Plates in the DVNO music video.
- The title and guitar-riff of "Brianvision" reference Queen's lead guitarist, Brian May.
- "Close Call" from Woman is rather obviously inspired by "Brain Damage".
- Song Allusion Title: A Cross the Universe to "Across the Universe".
- Spelling Song: "D.A.N.C.E".
- Spoken Word in Music: From "Let There be Lite":
- Who is the DJ today?
Give me something to dance to. But please no techno,
'CAUSE IT'S HURTING MY HEAD AND I'M READY TO DISCO!
DISCO! DISCO, DISCO!
- The "DISCO! DISCO, DISCO!" is used in a few other live tracks of Justice's.
- This vocal is originally taken from Justice's remix of "Skitzo Dancer" by Scenario Rock.
- Surreal Music Video: "Stop" is a prime example. You don't really need to start paying attention until the football helmet turns into a rose.
- Title Track: Audio, Video, Disco.