I don’t know if it’s something in La Seine’s waters or a cultural obsession with “Saturday Night Fever,” but disco survived by way of French.
It’s been nine years since Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay released †, an album which would go on to shape my interactions with electronic music. Even now, whenever I hear distortion being employed in electronic music, I immediately think of Justice. “Genesis,” the track that kicks off †, is this great operatic disco monolith, sinister in its straightforwardness, spilling over with fuzz and distortion. Even the percussion is distorted. This trademark of Justice cemented itself by the time “Waters of Nazareth” rolled around. There’s no space in the track that is not filled by warbling, amp-shattering distortion. All this to say that, despite a sophomore release that paled in comparison to their debut, I entered Justice’s Woman with incredibly high hopes.
And on Woman, the age of self-awareness is upon us. “Safe and Sound” kicks the record off with so much disco that it’s not possible to overlook the nostalgia that saturates the release. Compared to Earth Wind & Fire, this disco is a lot slower, which is to say although strings set the mood, what we’re really getting is funk. Sure, strings and a synthesizer dance around each other blatantly, there are keyboards and the kind of multi-part vocals reminiscent of the ‘70s, but this is one part disco, to two parts funk. And it is glorious.
However, compared to †, Woman is much less abrasive. “Pleasure” for example exemplifies elements of disco while inserting a chorus that alleviates from the shiny aesthetic presented. And while unapologetic disco music isn’t really my thing, Woman manages to carve out a niche for itself in the hole left by the relative inactivity of artists like Breakbot and Kavinsky. (Seriously, Kavinsky, it’s been three years.) Songs like “Fire” make use of the same airtight grooves that cropped up on their debut, but among a less distorted, less harsh background. One can only speculate as to the reason for the change: an appeal to the masses? An aesthetic shift from the more arena-rock aspects of their earlier music?
If there’s one marked structural change on this record, it’s that the tracks on it are less driven by a central phrase or groove. “Stop,” for example, seems to meander between several phrases that fall in and out of the foreground. The same can sort of be said for “Chorus.” But the latter marks a blending of Justice’s more harsh palate with an ‘80s-dystopian vibe, a re-imagining of the soundtrack for Logan’s Run, if you will.
One of the more central tracks on the record comes by way of the single, “Randy,” and it’s at this juncture that we get a more straightforward pop track, all glitter and palm-muted guitars in the background. It’s this song that acts as the flag-bearer for Justice’s new, more lush incarnation. “Randy,” along with “Heavy Metal” blend the two aesthetics together. “Heavy Metal” incorporates the more brooding harpsichord licks of their past work, and “Randy” smooths it all out, two aesthetics which culminate in “Love S.O.S.”
