@Terminal 5 during CMJ in New York.
A review of the show from The Times:
October 22, 2007
Music Review | Justice
To Everything (Churn, Churn, Churn) There's Techno
By NATE CHINEN
The iconography was brutally simple at Terminal 5 on Saturday night. Imposing stacks of Marshall amplifiers flanked both sides of the stage. Stationed between them was the French D.J. duo Justice, which had sold out the capacious room. And at the center of it all stood a large, pale-yellow illuminated cross.
At the start of the show, each piece of this set design drew what sounded like a recognition cheer, which made sense. Over the last few years, and especially the last six months, Justice — Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — has amassed a following as familiar with its look as with its sound. This spring the group used the same stage getup for its triumphant stand at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. And when the first full-length Justice album appeared this summer, its title was simply a cross symbol, in a calculated show of irreverence.
Of course the visual aesthetic would mean little without the music. As it happens, the "Cross" album, released on Ed Banger/Vice, has received well-deserved acclaim for its visceral take on electronic music. With a sound partly inspired by heavy metal — hence the religious imagery, and the Marshall stacks, really just for show — Justice aims to bring a bruising energy to the dance floor. Judging by the deep churn in the crowd at Terminal 5, the strategy worked.
The show began like the album, with (what else?) "Genesis," a portentous fanfare that gives way to irrepressible horror-show funk; on a subterranean level it resembles Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which is probably no mistake. There were only slight alterations to the track, at chest-thumping lower frequencies, but gradually "Genesis" diverged from its path on the album: instead of morphing into the pseudo-disco of "Let There Be Light," it took on the robotic syncopations of "Phantom."
Justice has been honing essentially the same set during its two-week North American tour, which ends tonight at Terminal 5. It went over resoundingly well on Saturday, even though (or perhaps because) it left out the more funk-fusion-oriented moments on the album and focused mainly on the four-four throb of techno, or disco. "D.A.N.C.E.," the closest thing Justice has to a current mainstream single, cropped up only as a fragmented allusion. Playing the whole song would have required a lull in propulsion, and that would have been unthinkable.
As is usual with a D.J. show of this scale, it was impossible to tell just what the artists were doing behind their equipment. Mr. Augé and Mr. Rosnay bobbed in time as they hunched over their consoles. At times Mr. Augé, the more extroverted of the two, pumped a fist in the air.
The crowd easily matched his exuberance. There was a huge sing-along to "We Are Your Friends," the remake of a tune by the British band Simian; this was the track that put Justice on the map in 2003 and won best video at last year's MTV Europe Music Awards.
In the encore, Justice offered a characteristic mash-up of its own tune "The Party" and Metallica's "Master of Puppets," pairing distorted guitar riffs with a timeless vocal exhortation: "Let's get this party started right." But the party was ending. After the duo left the stage for a second time, the crowd returned to the "We Are Your Friends" chorus, singing as one voice until the houselights came on.
Justice performs tonight at Terminal 5, 610 West 56th Street, Clinton; (212) 260-4700 or terminal5nyc.com.
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