The electronic duo Justice returns with “Hyperdrama”, a musical roller coaster with varied climates

With this album, which took them more than three years to produce, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé go further than ever, intimately mixing pop and sound experiments for 50 minutes. Great art.

Four albums in twenty years is not a lot. But Justice always took his time, refusing to bow to the record industry’s hyperactive agenda. A relative slowness, which goes hand in hand with the demands of the Parisian tandem and their well-known obsession with detail – resolving a half-decibel problem can take them weeks. This time, eight years have passed, an eternity, between the last album, woman (2016), and the new one, Hyperdramawhich comes out Friday April 26. And it was worth the wait.

From the first bars of this collection of 13 pieces, we instantly recognize Justice. However, this impression of a reunion is misleading: if the aggression and distortions are still present, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé have updated their formula and their sound. To be convinced, you just need to listen to their first album again Cross (2007), to which they make some strong nods here – generator for example, it’s a bit Genesis version 2024, richer, fuller, more intense, more epic, more everything.

Fact, Hyperdrama, It’s not drama and tears. It is the hyper dramatization of sensations and feelings, where everything is exacerbated, from euphoria to uneasiness. With this album, which took them more than three years to produce, the two musicians, DJs and producers go further than ever, intimately mixing pop and sound experiments for 50 minutes.

Aboard this musical rollercoaster, the duo seems to take great pleasure in making the listener lose their bearings: organic or digital? Aggressive or festive? Am I at the beginning or the end of the song? In doing so, Justice explores a wide variety of moods, often within the songs themselves. The tracks are incredibly versatile, tumultuous, rugged, shamelessly mixing the brutality of gabber with the sugar of disco, and linking right hooks and cottony caresses.

No less than six guests at the microphone, only the voices of angels

The variety of climates is also explained by the great novelty of this fourth album, which displays a record number of guests at the microphone. There are six in total, starting with Kevin Parker, the mastermind of Tame Impala, whose divine voice adorns two titles, Neverender (opening) and One Night/All Night (single party in scout), instant classics made for the dancefloor.

If Gaspard and Xavier have formed an almost twin entity since their beginnings and work independently in the studio installed at Xavier in Paris, they have not been content with banal and now all too common remote work with their hosts. The idea was to meet together in the same room and to briefly form a trio group with each of their guests. Only voices of angels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7EtRHsun1U

Thus Rimon, a still unknown Dutch singer introduced to them by Pedro Winter, the boss of their label Ed Banger, illuminates Afterimage, a well-balanced piece of synthetic disco, between grace and menace. The Flints, two British twins, also little-known, whisper about psychedelics Model Love. Prodigy bassist Thundercat, whose voice Justice adores, was deprived of his favorite instrument to give flesh to the finale The End. Alone Connan Mockasin, in spoken word mode on the galactic melancholy ofExploreworked remotely from New Zealand, with images from Pierre La Police and Moebius as his only guides.

Our absolute favorite goes to the ultra-princely falsetto of the American Miguel. Combined with the firepower of Justice, he makes futuristic R&B Saturnine, disconcertingly slow, as if he were constantly hampered in his progress, one of the peaks of this record. His voice is raw, the result of a single mono take, without reverb or any effect, which initially panicked the singer. At the end, it is precisely the contrast between this naked, organic and unpretentious voice, and the multiple technological sound stripes, which gives all the salt to the piece.

Gabber and italo-disco launched at full speed

The instrumental titles also provide pleasant surprises. The steamroller generatoras mentioned above, close to the ingenuous and joyful elegance of Dear Alana tribute to Alan Braxe, pioneer of the French Touch. Incognitodeveloped like several other pieces “from a deconstructed and slowed down gabber rhythm“, avoids the accident of a racing car launched at full speed by tempering it with judicious Italo-disco samples. And we even find on this disc a surprising jazz and melancholic UFO on the saxophone called Moonlight Rendezvous.

Radical, excessive, seesawing, passing without warning from anxiety to pure joy, Hyperdrama pushes and mishandles from start to finish, warding off any boredom. This album, perhaps their best to date, in any case their most accomplished, can only be tamed after at least three listens and will then definitely win you over. The initial difficulty becomes addictive upon arrival. We know it when the title that was annoying the first time becomes your favorite. And for a long time.

“Hyperdrama” by Justice (Ed Banger/Because Music) releases Friday April 26, 2024

Justice, who kicked off his world tour in April at the American festival Coachella, will begin the French part of the tour at We Love Green on June 1. They will then be at the Nuits de Fourvière on June 17, Beauregard festival on July 4, Main Square Festival on July 6, Les Déferlantes on July 11, Musilac on July 13, Terres du Son on July 14, Dour Festival (Belgium) on July 21 . The tour will end with two Accor Arenas in Paris, on December 17 (full) and 18, 2024.