Justice - Cross

Alright, we're heading deeper now. Justice is a somewhat more recent group that is aligned with the now somewhat famous Ed Banger Records.

Justice has been described as the new Daft Punk, which is a term used a lot in hopes that it's the revival of French Touch. In interviews however Justice has stated that they really can't feel compared to Daft Punk cause they are both doing different things. French Touch is something they like but it isn't their goal to revive it, they just want to make something new if they can. Justice has risen to the top of the French Dance Scene and is at the moment considered to be the most influential groups coming from France at this time.

Anyway, down to the music bit. I picked up "Cross" during the Winter while staying in Belgium and had already heard a bit about it before I bought it. I can really tell there are some distinct French Touch elements, but it's all jumbled around and chopped up. I have listened to more Ed Banger Records since then and see this choppiness in most of their artists and songs, so it's a bit normal now. It sounds a lot like a normal track that was made perfectly and then cut into pieces and sort of randomly placed around while keeping important elements flowing, so the whole song doesn't become a mess.

One thing that stuck out of that album was the cover, I still don't fully understand what the cross is all about or even why some of the song titles are references from the Bible, but it was very strange to see this in an Electronica album. Generally it's all very dancy music and has a lot of lighter tones to it than most Electronica being darker. However some songs were extremely dark, hell some songs didn't even come over as songs to me, two examples are "Genesis" and "Stress", both sound like an intro or outro of some sort but just continue going and sort of warp into a song of some sort. While other songs like "DVNO" and "D.A.N.C.E" are straight up by the book dance songs with no theory errors or anything. These changes and fluctuations between songs was a bit strange but I liked it in a way. Most of the songs were extremely catchy and the others just satisfied experimental hunger. My major complaint being, repetitiveness, with the sore thumb being "Phantom", this is a song that in my opinion goes nowhere, it starts and just stays at that same point, then comes part two of the song and it gets a bit different, but not extremely. Why didn't they just make one "Phantom" and skip the parts and just make a full song with differences going on in it? I don't really get it, "Phantom Part 1" is like the intro to "Phantom Part 2" where it's the actual song. "New Jack" is another pit where it falls into complete repetitiveness, the song could be described as an interesting 12 second sample looping for about 4-5 min. I Liked Uffie's appearance in "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy" but that was one of the only ones that really stuck out as an interesting twist. Once you have heard the first 3 songs you could figure out the rest quite easily.

I give the entire album a 6.5/10.

Song Line up:

1. Genesis 5/10
2. Let There be Light 6/10
3. D.A.N.C.E 8/10
4. New Jack 4/10
5. Phantom Part 1 3/10
6. Phantom Part 2 7/10
7. Valentine 5/10
8. Tthhee Ppaarrttyy 8/10
9. DVNO 8/10
10. Stress 7/10
11. Waters of Nazareth 8/10
12. One Minute To Midnight 6/10

To sum it all up: Good, but gets old fast. After hearing it a few times all the way through you've heard it all, you'll recognize song after song easily and it leaves no mystery to getting to know the album very well. In my opinion it's a very pop style driven album where it's not exactly excellence, some albums I've heard however are so excellent you just know it had to be selected from three times as many songs to just make the album. I do however give it credit for being extremely creative, but in my opinion it has flaws, certain borders are crossed that don't have to be, and in all honestly there's too much being tried in most songs. It's very refreshing but not all the way through, like a drink on a hot day that get hotter as you drink it and then cools down once you get to the bottom.

I would really suggest people to listen to Justice as I really like them as a group and enjoy a lot of their tracks, some of which have not been released such as their remixes and earlier songs. However I just don't encourage buying the album, I usually just end up listening to a few songs and skip through a lot of the others. So if you're an iTunes person just download a few and you should have plenty for just a while. In general, good group that brought out an album too fast.

Phobic's Top Justice Songs:

1. We Are you're Friends
2. Phantom Part 2 (Boysnoize Remix)
3. Waters of Nazareth
4. D.A.N.C.E
5.Tthhee Ppaarrttyy