Justice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé (born 21 May 1979 in Besançon) and Xavier de Rosnay (born 2 July 1982 in Rosnay). The duo was one of the most successful groups on Ed Banger Records
Their debut album † was released in June 2007 to critical acclaim. The album was later nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" and came in at number 15 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2007 and number 18 on Blender's "25 Best Albums of 2007" list. It was nominated for the 2007 Shortlist Prize, losing out to The Reminder by Feist. Their remix of the MGMT song "Electric Feel" won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical in 2009.
History
Justice first produced tracks together for Musclorvision's "Hits Up To You," a concept compilation where tracks were designed to sound like they were meant for the
Eurovision song contest. The compilation included two of their songs, and a track by Augé's alter-ego Microloisir. Justice first came to prominence through their 2003 remix of
Simian's track "Never Be Alone", created for a Paris college radio station's remix contest. and eventually given a commercial release in the UK in the summer of 2006 under the title "We Are Your Friends," on Ten Records, a sub-label of
Virgin Records.
After the original release of "We Are Your Friends" Justice worked on remixes
Justice appeared as a Live PA at the 2007 Parklife and festivals around Australia, the 2008 Coachella festival; the 2007 and 2008 Sónar festival in Barcelona, Fuji Rock Festival in Niigata, Japan; the Hultsfred Festival in Hultsfred, Sweden; the Oxegen festival in Kildare, Ireland; the T in the Park festival in Kinross, Scotland; the Reading Festival in Reading, England; the Vieilles Charrues Festival in Carhaix, France; the Roskilde Festival in Roskilde, Denmark; Pukkelpop in Belgium, at the "I LOVE TECHNO" festival in Ghent, Belgium; Dour Festival in Belgium; Rock Werchter in Belgium; the Lowlands festival and the Pinkpop festival in The Netherlands; at Tennents Vital in the Radio One Tent in Belfast; at the Phoenix Park Marquee in Dublin; and at the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim in Spain.
Justice was nominated for Best Dance Recording (for "D.A.N.C.E.") and Best Electronic/Dance Album (for †) at the 50th Grammy Awards.
Justice uploaded their music video for "Stress" to YouTube on 1 May 2008, having had several TV stations boycott the video. The clip features a group of youths committing acts of vandalism and harassment, wearing jackets bearing the Justice cross on the back. Accused in some quarters of racism for its stereotypical depiction of youths of African descent (both black and North African) from Paris' socially deprived banlieues, others saw the video as a critique of their portrayal in the French media. Speaking in an interview with The Quietus website, Augé said, “We were expecting some fuss obviously, but definitely not on those topics… If people see racism in the video, it's definitely because they might have a problem with racism; because they only see black people beating up white people, which is not what happens.”
De Rosnay said, “Eighty percent of France is Christian." In an interview for Dummy in 2005, Justice said that they wanted a strong concept for each record they put out and with this one they wanted to keep people guessing.
with the large illuminated cross they typically perform alongside]]
On 1 June 2008, The Sun announced that Justice was chosen by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to produce the band's follow up to Stadium Arcadium, but this was quickly corrected by Ed Banger manager Pedro Winter, as Anthony Kiedis had only stated he was a fan of Justice, not preparing for a collaboration.
In July 2008, Justice was revealed to have done a mix for the Dior Homme Summer 2009 Fashion Show, much like Daft Punk did for Louis Vuitton in 2007.
The track, now known as Planisphere, was released in four parts on the band's MySpace page, with an extra final cut that did not make it into the fashion show mix (known as "Planisphere IV", or "Planisphere Final").
On 25 August 2008, the band announced via MySpace that their next major release would be a DVD documentary/concert film titled A Cross the Universe. The announcement was also tied in with an invitation for fans to e-mail photos, images and artwork to an address so that the received photos could be compiled for use as artwork for the release.
An iconic scene in A Cross The Universe happens in Las Vegas, where, as an homage to Axl Rose, Gaspard marries a groupie whom he had met three hours previously.
During a DJ tour for the release of A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being re-attached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page.
Justice played 2009 New Year's Eve in Chicago at the Congress Theater to a crowd of well over 4,000. Augé was seen later that night at an after-party thrown in honor of the band featuring various local DJs, artists and photographers.
In January 2009 French group Birdy Nam Nam released their album "Manual for Successful Rioting", Justice produced the last song on the album "The Parachute Ending".
Their remix of MGMT's "Electric Feel" won a Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical in 2009.
In the November 2009 issue of Mixmag, Justice stated that they would be working on the soundtrack for Mr. Oizo's upcoming film, Rubber, saying they had to "finish working on the soundtrack for Mr. Oizo's new film before we start recording for the new album."
In April 2009 the music website Stereogum hosted a remix by the duo of U2's song "Get On Your Boots", the lead single off of the band's most recent album No Line on the Horizon. Their remix of Lenny Kravitz's song "Let Love Rule" was also featured on Kanye West's blog.
Also in April 2009 at the Coachella Valley Music Festival, Augé was seen at the "Dome" with Busy P, DJ Mehdi, and Daft Punk. They played at the 2009 Voodoo Experience in New Orleans, as well as at the HARD Haunted Mansion in LA over the Halloween weekend.
Musical style and equipment
Their style has been thought of as having some heavy metal influence and combines cut-up bass lines with a compressed and distorted synth sound. Their music often includes
bass slapping. Additionally, Justice uses samples of other songs to add to the effect, as with their song "TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY", featuring
Uffie.
Equipment used by Justice in their productions include :
an Apogee Ensemble Recording Interface
a Power Mac G5 computer
Cubase
other software sequencers.
Their live setup includes :
a Korg RADIAS
three JazzMutant Lemur Input Devices,
two MacBook Pros running Ableton Live
a Korg MicroKorg
an AKAI MPD24
a Korg ZERO8
a Pioneer DJM800.
On each side of "Valentine" (a non-functional
modular synthesizer prop) are nine stacked Marshall cabinet fronts, adding up to a total of 18. The cabinet stacks are another nonfunctional prop that serve as stage dressing. Their DJ setup previously included two Pioneer
CDJ-1000MK3s and a Pioneer DJM800., but since the
A Cross The Universe release tour, Justice have been using
Ableton Live controlled by an AKAI MPD24 and a Pioneer DJM800 for their DJ sets.
Discography
Studio albums
2007: †
Live albums
2008: A Cross the Universe
EP
2008: Planisphère
Filmography
A Cross the Universe
Awards and nominations
| Name | Justice |
|---|
| Awards | 5 |
|---|
| Nominations | 13 |
|---|
| Grammyn | 4 |
|---|
| Grammyw | 1 |
|---|
| Mtveuropew | 3 |
|---|
| Mtveuropen | 3 |
|---|
| Mtvvideon | 1 |
|---|
| Nrjn | 2 |
|---|
| Shortlistn | 1 |
|---|
| Award1 | Victoires de la Musique |
|---|
| Award1w | 1 |
|---|
| Award1n | 2 |
|---|
Justice's debut album, †, was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" and it was also nominated for the 2007 Shortlist Prize, but lost to The Reminder by Feist. The duo has been successful at the MTV Europe Music Awards, winning three awards: "Best Video" for "We Are Your Friends" in 2006 and "D.A.N.C.E." in 2007, and "Best French Act" for the band, also in 2007. Their remix of the MGMT song "Electric Feel" won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical in 2009. Overall, Justice has received five awards from thirteen nominations.
Grammy Awards
The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States.
|-
|rowspan="3"| ||rowspan="2"| "D.A.N.C.E." || Best Short Form Music Video ||
|-
| Best Dance Recording ||
|-
| † || Best Electronic/Dance Album ||
|-
|| || "Electric Feel (Justice Remix)" || Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical||
MTV Europe Music Awards
The
MTV Europe Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony established in 1994 by
MTV Europe.
|-
| 2006 || "We Are Your Friends" || Best Video ||
|-
|rowspan="2"| 2007 || "D.A.N.C.E." || Best Video ||
|-
| Justice || Best French Act ||
MTV Video Music Awards
The
MTV Video Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony established in 1984 by
MTV.
|-
| || "D.A.N.C.E." ||
Video of the Year ||
NRJ Music Awards
The
NRJ Music Awards is an annual French awards ceremony created by the
NRJ radio station and the
TF1 television network.
|-
|rowspan="2"| 2008 || Justice || Best New Artist ||
|-
| "D.A.N.C.E." || Best Video ||
Shortlist Music Prize
The
Shortlist Music Prize is a music award given annually to an album released in the United States within the last year.
|-
| 2007 ||
† || Shortlist Music Prize ||
Victoires de la Musique
The
Victoires de la Musique is an annual French award ceremony.
|-
|rowspan="2"| 2008 || Justice || Best Electronic/Dance Act ||
|-
| "D.A.N.C.E." || Best Video ||
References
External links
Backstage & Live Justice Photography
Justice at London Astoria
Review of A Cross the Universe
Justice Video Interview
Category:Musical groups established in 2003
Category:French electronic music groups
Category:Club DJs
Category:Remixers
Category:2000s music groups
Category:Electronic music duos
Category:French house musicians
Category:Dance-punk musical groups
Category:Ableton Live users
Category:French dance music groups
Category:French DJs
.svg)
