Oh boy, this has been a long time coming.

Over a month ago, I was presented with the possibility of an interview with Ed Banger giants Justice, just as details over the group’s North American tour were starting to become public. After five weeks of not hearing anything, I merely thought this was a case of Justice’s PR outfit ignoring blogs for mainstream media coverage - until I got an e-mail at work wanting to know if I wanted to do a same-day interview with Xavier de Rosnay in about four hours.

Although I’d only get fifteen minutes and I was left juggling work while brainstorming potential interview questions, I knew I had to make it work. However, because of a bad cell phone connection (which didn’t help when trying to understand Xavier’s French accent), I couldn’t write this in the typical BYT q&a format.

In the days before flashing narrative t-shirts and the massive perpetuation of French electropop that we’re seeing take over independent music today, Xavier de Rosnay and Justice was a simple remix outfit that had signed with Ed Banger after winning a remix contest in 2003. But after releasing their own record - the monolithic “+,” or whatever, Justice’s Xavier de Rosnay says the duo is no longer remixing the material of artists like Daft Punk, Mystery Jets, and Franz Ferdinand - a quick glance over at Hype Machine will tell you the band is being remixed several times over by artists like MSTRKRFT and LA Riots.

“We always had aspirations to make our own music - for the first three years, a lot of people were asking for our remixes,” de Rosnay said. “A remix you can make in two days, but we spend a lot more time on our own tracks - we don’t do remixes anymore.”

It’s true - although their beginnings were the result of a fortuitous contest, de Rosnay owes much of his success to the word of mouth, and keyboards - even if it would dredge up some material de Rosnay hoped would have never seen the light of day.

“We’ve never been angry at any blogs who were giving away our music for free because you find a balance - the only thing that I wasn’t happy about is when a blog gave away a demo of an unfinished track,” de Rosnay claims. “I still have no idea how they found it.”

The band quickly jumped from blog darlings to a Grammy-nominated outfit for Best Electronic/Dance Record. So when the band started planning dates in the US, it seemed really ambitious for the group to try and fill out Madison Square Garden with some rather exorbitant ticket prices. However, the numbers at the time made sense to de Rosnay during the planning of the show, which ended up having to downgrade to the smaller Washington Mutual Theater, much to the delight of bloggers who thought it was arrogant of the band to book such a gigantic venue.

“When we planned the show for New York City, we had two options - three shows at Terminal Five or one show at Madison Square Garden. Okay, we thought, that’s cool, and we’ll be covered,” de Rosnay said. “The problem is that tickets were way too expensive, and I think that’s way too much for a ticket. I can’t picture any kids spending $65 to come see us; I wouldn’t spend that much money to go see a concert, even if I was a big fan of the band. When the show wasn’t selling, we tried to find the problem, so the first thing we asked about was ticket price - and I thought ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ (The D.C. show) is going to be mayhem.”

When the band plays out, the live setup is intense and visually impressive, as gigantic stacks of Marshall Amplifiers loom over the crowd.

(photo by josh sisk)

Quick to attack, press who had seen the duo perform at Coachella from backstage said the setup was purely for show, and that nothing was actually hooked up. But de Rosnay was quick to quell the rumors, and said it takes the band about six hours to set everything up, including the soundcheck. I’d imagine it’s quite a workout to be a roadie for Justice.

Kanye West took electropop to the top of the charts when he recorded “Stronger,” using the obvious Daft Punk sample we’ve been hearing for years. And although de Rosnay wouldn’t necessarily mind if a Justice song got sampled by a hip-hop artist, he also made a point that what Kanye did wasn’t anything new, not that there is anything wrong with that - as long as it doesn’t completely suck.

“You know, Afrika Bambaata started doing this a long time ago - so really, this is nothing new,” de Rosnay said. “If it ends up in good music, I’ll end up being for it.”

Now, here’s the part where we ask the band about a track or two off their record.

Stress is a song that sticks out like a white kid in Compton when considering the remainder of Justice’s work, but when de Rosnay explains the background and the creation of the song, it makes more sense than anything else on the rest of the record

“We did it when we were listening to a lot of disco music and we picked up a lot of classical music hooks and connected them to disco,” de Rosnay said. “We just wanted to make our own version of this, so we made a modern disco track with an element of classical music. It’s funny that everybody thinks it’s the most violent track on the album, when it’s just a disco song structured classically.”

If you run into Justice after Wednesday’s show, packing away piles of Marshall Ampilfiers - just keep the band’s use of the cross out of any questions you’d like to ask them. Apparently, they’re sick of talking about it.

“I’m done talking about this. Next question,” de Rosnay sneered. This meant my question about pre-show Our Fathers would have to wait until the talk about the cross dies down.

Oh well. Until the next tour, I suppose.

if you want more than our 15 minutes with JUSTICE:
read up Josh & Christina’s coverage of the Baltimore Show
and
check them out at 930 club this Wednesday

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