You’re off your face and lost in the beat, but it’s all so repetitive that you barely notice that music is playing anymore. Sweat’s pouring off your brow and the girl you were talking to has mysteriously disappeared “to the loo” for the past hour and a half after you tried to stick your tongue down her throat.
You’re off your face and lost in the beat, but it’s all so repetitive that you barely notice that music is playing anymore. Sweat’s pouring off your brow and the girl you were talking to has mysteriously disappeared “to the loo” for the past hour and a half after you tried to stick your tongue down her throat.
Justice – †
Ed Banger records
You’re in a club. You’re off your face and lost in the beat, but it’s all so repetitive that you barely notice that music is playing anymore. Sweat’s pouring off your brow and the girl you were talking to has mysteriously disappeared "to the loo" (surely "bog" – ed) for the past hour and a half after you tried to stick your tongue down her throat. You’ve given yourself to a hollow Saint Vitus Dance; it’s the only way to convince yourself you’re having fun because you don’t really want to go home and get a step closer to tomorrow morning’s hangover. And then…
And then Phantom by Justice kicks in. First the distorted synth, catchy, more tuneful than anything you’ve heard all evening, followed swiftly the processed drums. You dance harder. This is pretty good. Next the track gets richer; glitchy noises, layers of drums. Unexpectedly, it all slows down again and you’re back to the beginning, only it’s different and scratchy blasts of noise cut across the track. It has dynamics and you’re pulled out of your "it’s all the same" reverie. And then the track moves on. It could be another song; the pulsating shreds of notes caress your limbs. No, squeeze you into an embrace of the dance. You’re moves are beyond the realm of possibility and you need to know what this song is, so that even when it collapses back into some other identikit dance track you’re left with a sense of elation better than four pills and a snog. The disco lights have touched you like the hand of God.
Justice know they are like the hand of God. Everything about ‘†’, from the title and the names of the tracks, Genesis, Let There Be Light, Waters of Nazareth to the sheer mystery of the sound is smeared in the day-glo colours of religious ecstasy, a Pop Art Sistine Chapel with plot twists of which Borges would be proud. One moment Roman soldiers drink at a crucifixion, dance with whores and cavort with Venus to beats like the orgasmic jerking of a rusty bedstead; the next moment replaced with break dancers and the sugar rush children’s choir of D.A.N.C.E. Songs, if these loose collections of danceable snippets can really be called that, take turns where there is no road and appear in places you’d never expect them. Stress begins with a sample not dissimilar to the creepy shark attack music of Jaws before exploding into sunbeam drones and air raid sirens whilst The Party features Ed Banger label-mate Uffie offering an ode to hedonism in her trademark finishing school/gangsta rapper style over a backing track reminiscent of a lonely, rainy taxi ride home. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Perfectly.
And that’s all you need to know. This album works perfectly, sounds like God and once, a man pissed on the dance floor when I played a track off it. I don’t think I could offer further endorsement.
Words: Tristan Burke.