At the Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon, the duo Justice took off the ancient theater with an explosive live performance

At the second concert of their French tour, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé offered the numerous Lyon public on Monday a frenetic sound and light show which will go down in history.

The Grand Gallo-Roman theater, located in the heights of Old Lyon, where the concerts of the Nuits de Fourvière festival are held, was already full weeks ago for the Justice concert. Expectations are high as the Parisian duo released their fourth album in April, the very successful Hyperdrama, after eight years of absence from recording, and has so far only played one concert on this tour in France (at the We Love Green festival). Monday, June 17, four thousand two hundred enthusiastic people are gathered in front of the stage and seated shoulder to shoulder in the arena, where the old stones have heated up all day under a blazing sun.

After a twirling and dancing DJ set from their label mate (Ed Banger) DJ Feadz, night fell and the Moon rose when Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé took charge around 10:30 p.m. Backlit, they greet and start slowly, on a slightly stormy arpeggio loop, before sending out the beat of the apocalypse announcing the epic Genesiswho opened their first album Cross in 2007. The remains of ancient columns which decorate the back of the stage are about to experience the most formidable sonic take-off of their two thousand years of existence. Concentrated and diligent on their machines, the two musicians propel these venerable ruins directly into the future.

For an hour and fifteen minutes, the duo will interweave, in an explosive fury and under a Dantesque rain of lights, new pieces reinvented and rearranged especially for live and classics from their repertoire, creating dazzling sonic chimeras. A great feverish remix, demonstrating a consummate art of live efficiency, with a science of never-ending climbs and a delightful telescoping of sound loops where already hits regularly enter and exit Neverender And One Night/All Night with the divine voice of Kevin Parker of Tame Impala.

“For us, live is totally different from records. A live performance must be readable and intelligible at first listen“, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé explained to us a few hours before going on stage. “The audience must immediately have fun.“

Of We Are Your Friends has Stressand of DANCE has Safe and Sound Or Audio, Video, DiscoJustice concocts a sort of best of more danceable than brutal – “The sound is annoying but it’s good!“, a neighbor tells us – while constantly providing surprises. The tandem, which presents “a very written live“, does not give up and holds the audience in his hands. If many had planned to preserve their hearing with earplugs, it should be noted that despite the record proximity offered by this concert, the sound was carefully regulated, from so that the power did not affect the sound quality, quite comfortable.

Visually, Justice’s new live show is unlike any other. No screen on the sides, no figurative image, but an exceptional and maximalist light show tailor-made for the duo, which is a real eye-catcher. Made up of around fifteen articulated light bars, an impressive piece of machinery co-designed and manually controlled by their lighting designer Vincent “Lewis” Lerisson, it changes and evolves throughout the concert, matching the music and dressing the stage in a thousand lights.

“As we thought about this show, nothing is free. Everything must illustrate something that’s happening in the music“, explains the duo, two former graphic designers who have never left the aesthetic and visual part of their music to chance.”That’s why we don’t have a 20-foot-tall clown dancing“, quips Gaspard. “The idea is to do as much as possible with light with as few elements as possible. We cut all the figurative images to just refocus the attention on the scene, not on us but on the scene.“

The light strips descend like a divine intervention, rise like the stems of plants grow, generate graphic figures, going so far as to frame the duo in a simulacrum of a low ceiling lit by neon lights which suddenly makes them look like two mad scientists in their laboratory , elegant as they are, dressed in suit jackets and wearing seventies-style glasses. It must be said that this set is not without humor. As proof, we want this accelerated chase at the end ofAfterimageyet based on an angelic vocal loop from the singer Rimon, transformed here into a hysterical cavalcade, which brought a smile to our faces.

Justice en live, which inevitably ends with long hugs with the audience in the front rows, it is a mischievous reinvention both frenetic and euphoric of their compositions, which seems to have the sole objective of hypnotizing the spectator until ‘that he gives thanks. A meeting of the 3^e type from which you come out rinsed and with your tongue hanging out.

Justice continues its festival tour this summer : June 30 in Glastonbury (GB), July 4 at Beauregard in Hérouville Saint-Clair, July 6 at Main Square in Arras, July 11 at Déferlantes in Barcarès, July 13 at Musilac in Aix-les-Bains , July 14 at Terres du Son in Monts, July 21 at the Dour Festival, August 17 at the Cabaret Vert in Charleville-Mézières… before in particular two Accord Arena Paris-Bercy on December 17 and 18, 2024.
The Nuits de Fourvière festival continues until July 25 in Lyon