November 29th, 2007France savours "the saviours of electro"
PARIS (AFP) — Ten years since the height of Daft Punk mania, Paris has produced a new duo of house music heros.
Such is the buzz surrounding Justice, whose debut album has sold 100,000 copies in France and 300,000 elsewhere in Europe, that the pair have been labelled the “saviours of electro” by the music press and fans.
The two 20-somethings at the centre of this messianic-like hero worship would rather keep their feet on the ground and reject the sense of responsibility from such highfalutin titles.
But the reception given to Justice highlights the latent thirst in France for new home-grown electronic music stars, with the nation in waiting since Daft Punk stormed the world and had everyone talking about the “French touch” at the end of the 1990s.
“We never put pressure on ourselves by saying ?they are waiting for us, we need to save electro in France?,” 25-year-old Xavier de Rosnay, told AFP in an interview.
“We don?t have that pretension and neither do we want to do it: we don?t think that electro needs to be saved.”
Prophets? Messiahs? The religious parallels are unmissable, however.
Their debut album has a Christian-style cross as its title and live performances start with fans brandishing the symbol in expectation before the duo arrive on stage as thick, saturated basslines build up.
“We just wanted to make a pop or modern disco album,” says de Rosnay.
Whatever their intentions, de Rosnay and his 28-year-old sidekick Gaspard Auge have succeeded in leading French house music out of the dark and have made people talk about a “Paris scene” again.
Justice were one of the most talked about acts at this year?s Sonar event in Barcelona, Europe?s biggest electronic music festival, and the label at the heart of the Paris revival, Ed Banger, showcased a number of new artists including Feadz, Uffie and DJ Mehdi.
Having already played in Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States, the pair are currently touring in France before starting a world tour from February-September next year.
Even before the release of their album in June, Justice were already building up a fan base by word-of-mouth thanks to several releases and remixes of Britney Spears, Franz Ferdinand and Justin Timberlake.
The remix of Britney Spears shows how the pair unashamedly take influences from pop music and incorporate them in their core electro house sound.
De Rosnay says he is influenced by “all the pop of the 90s, what was playing on the radio and on television, from Nirvana to Snoop Dogg.”
“From Elvis to Bowie including The Beatles and The White Stripes, the idea of pop has always been to make music as well as everything that goes around it, including the image. It?s fascinating,” he adds.
As well as the cross motif used on the album and at concerts, de Rosnay and Auge have done fashion-style photo shoots for a host of music magazines and their video won best music video 2007 at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Munich.
“It?s fun to play with all the elements at our disposal to make up the pop persona of Justice,” says de Rosnay. “It is not through us, because we?re not rock stars, but through everything else: the artwork on the album or the stage show at concerts.”
The big cross “is our David Bowie, it works almost like a person in the eyes of the public”, he adds.
Gaspard Auge, who sports the same moustache as the singer of Motorhead, says that hardrock also influenced Justice, although he confesses to not really being a fan of the music.
The Daft Punk duo, who have released a new live album and DVD recently, have sold about six million records.
The first of their three studio albums, “Homework”, was the starting point in 1997 of what became known as the “French touch” wave as French house music took off in nightclubs around the world.
