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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Paris is burning (reprise). Intoxicatingly pitched somewhere between Daft Punk and actual daft punk, Cross, the debut album from French distorto-house duo Justice, is exactly the sort of confidence-boosting release that the falteringly resurgent dance music scene needs right now. The perfect mixture of dumbness and deftness, it sounds – more so than any album in a long time – like it was cheesy-grinned, bouncing-off-the-walls, brilliant fun to make. “Yeah, it was a lot of fun to create,” beams Gaspard Augé, as he and Xavier de Rosnay absent-mindedly tweak drum sequences on a battered laptop in their London hotel room. “Well,” corrects Xavier, “it was probably 80 per cent fun, and maybe ten per cent tears, five percent gigs, two percent harassment and, um… I can’t remember where we are in percentage now. Sorry.”  We can forgive Gaspard and Xavier for being a little flaky, as on the afternoon that Collective meets them they are three days into no-sleep territory, with the prospect of headlining cavernous superclub Fabric just hours away. Their rise to top-of-the-bill status has been slow but steady: kicking off their career with an all-conquering remix of Simian’s We Are Your Friends, the pair went on to tear-up clubs with the ferocious funk of Waters Of Nazareth before sealing their status as the new lords of the dance with a long-player that cleverly walks the line between underground innovation and mainstream catchiness. “We had a kind of formula that we wanted to use for the album,” says Gaspard. “A way that we wanted it to progress. We didn’t want it to be just 12 dancefloor tunes in a row, so we opened it up with some accessible tracks, some poppy stuff, and then it moves into the more extreme sounds. We had the idea that you could listen to it in your home, and, after a while, without even noticing, you are listening to distorted noise and crazy beats.”  And there’s plenty more subversive sub-bass where Justice came from, as France is currently undergoing a flush of creativity not seen since the mid-90s disco-sampling boom. Justice’s labelmate Uffie looks set to take her grrrl-grime shtick and blow up next, leading the way for a full-scale invasion by the new generation of Gallic beatsmiths. “It’s exciting, yes,” says Xavier, allowing himself to swell a little with national pride. “But it’s not competitive, because all of us are doing such different styles. But it’s great to see everybody ‘going up’ in terms of success. There is such a good feeling in French music right now.”
Joe Madden
Justice – Cross, released 18 June 07 on Because.
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