I'll never forget the first thing I said when a friend introduced me to the first Justice album, Cross: "what the , are these guys like Christian rock or something?"
Aside from the album title and several of the song titles, there is hardly anything explicitly religious about Cross; most of the lyrics are about dancing and partying. it was only until I saw A Cross the Universe that I realized that Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay are actually pretty ing religious. there is footage of them kissing a pendant with a cross on it before every show, and of course the giant illuminated cross they play behind, which has become a signature for their live performances. This becomes very confusing after watching their film, which is basically 84 minutes of them partying their faces off and getting into strange and often dangerous situations that are never really explained. They get arrested, adored/worshipped/assaulted by crazy American fans, and even married to some stripper in Vegas.
The crazy thing is that Justice really is Christian rock, except the rock part has been sampled, remixed, distorted, and routed through 18 Marshall halfstacks, so that no one can really tell if it's rock music anymore, just the same as no one can really tell if it's Christian anymore. In the early 20th century, and even today, Christians congregate in huge numbers to experience Glossolalia and speak in tongues to "immerse" themselves in the Holy Spirit; is it any different to go to a rave and dance to distorted disco music that's loud as ?
As if that wasn't puzzling enough, the music itself is absolutely baffling from a technical standpoint. Their beats contain power like I've never heard, while also managing to maintain complete clarity, so that elements of their song can be sampled and swapped with each other a la Daft Punk.
You can call them Daft Punk fan boys, you can say that Digitalism did it first, but these two strange leather-clad French kids are doing something different. Even if you can't stand them, I hope that everyone sees their film, because it's quite a strange work of art in and of itself.
jupiterone
i wonder if their camera was even connected :rolleyes:
phyrrus
quote:
During a live set, they were seen using an Akai MPD24 which was visibly not connected to the USB jack, which caused a controversy that live sets were faked. Gaspard has since offered an explanation and the band has put a 3 photo set of the accident on their Myspace.[24]
18 marshall halfstacks my foot. I don't know anyone who routes anything through marshalls. 99% of all the rock bands you see have big marshalls out the front and they're all disconected. Then they have a couple of nice amps out the back, which don't look sexy, but actually sound better.
snak3st
Justice is Christian rock?
daphunky1
The preview I saw of the justice film looked extremely stupid and immature.
maluco
does anyone know why, what the hell they adopted a cross as mark?
Minimalism
good christian music
Minimalism
quote:
Originally posted by daphunky1
The preview I saw of the justice film looked extremely stupid and immature.
as oppose too?
dancemaniac
religion shouldn't really effect how people judge these guys! It should be all about the music, which you'll either love or hate. If anything i think its nice to see some postive messages on the dance scene! The only other peeps I know that are behind decent music aswell as decent messages are the Dance4life crew and its ambassadors (Tiesto is probably one of the most famous). They are using the power of dance music to help fight HIV and AIDs, check out Urbandancegroup.net for more!
flavdave
quote:
Originally posted by maluco
does anyone know why, what the hell they adopted a cross as mark?
They explain the reason why they use a cross in this Pitchfork interview. The original idea behind using it came from the church organ at the end of Waters of Nazareth. They thought it was an appropriate symbol to represent "people coming together."
