Review: Justice - Glasgow Academy

By FIONA SHEPHERD
Published on Tuesday 14 February 2012 00:00

FRENCH duo Justice are the latest in a distinguished line of clued-up crossover dance acts who also know how to rock the house.

Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – always the most French man in any room – started out as producers and remixers but have emerged as performers in their own right, arriving on stage at a full-capacity Academy looking like hirsute rock stars rather than sports casual club boys.

The duo’s first production collaboration was on a Eurovision-inspired concept compilation. While their own music is not so knowingly cheesy, it is unabashed in its appropriation of the musical trends that time forgot. The pair have deemed current album Audio, Video, Disco “a progressive rock record played by guys that don’t know how to play”.

They did, however, know how to work a room, delivering an experience that combined the sustained energy of a rave with the lairy catharsis of a punk gig and the excess of a pomp rock show – including a phalanx of Marshall amps for cosmetic display only and a 15-minute version of Civilization that rode out on chunky Korg chords and through several movements before reverting to its Italo-disco roots.

Even then, they were not quite finished with it, returning to the hookline elsewhere in a set that powered through the heavy-duty electro rock of Canon, paused for breath then plunged straight back into a diet of shrieking sirens, baroque organ arpeggios and the sweaty hands-in-the-air euphoria of We Are Your Friends.

Rating: *****

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