Album review: Justice's 'Audio, Video, Disco'

Xavier de Rosnay, half of the Parisian electronic duo Justice, has been telling the press that its second album, “Audio, Video, Disco,” is “bedroom music.” This might be accurate, if your bedroom has lighting rigs and holds 50,000 dancing people.

Justice, which made its name crusading around the world’s dance festivals, lighting a blazing cross onstage while pummeling the crowd of neon fanny-packers with operatic electro-house, returns with a record that sounds like the lush prog fantasia of Yes but manicured by club-hopping control freaks. For every guitar that ventures down a sonic maze in baroquely constructed songs such as “Canon,” there are the brutally executed rhythmic stops of the lean showpiece “Civilization.” As soon as the music really wanders, the demand for the beat collars it back.

Justice remixes, reimagines and quite possibly improves Lenny Kravitz's 'Let Love Rule'

Fans of Ed Banger Records and French electronica purists started scratching their heads when Parisian dance duo Justice remixed U2’s “Get Your Boots On” earlier this year. The rap against the song was that it represented the latest prostitution of Justice’s signature menacing/distorted synth sound. But don’t hate Justice simply because the group has hit that place in its career where being in-demand remixers for hire – by the likes of Britney Spears, N.E.R.D. and MGMT -- doesn’t necessarily preclude having a bit of fun.

Exhibit A: Justice’s new remix for Lenny Kravitz’s "Let Love Rule.” While the 1989 original was a catchy (if blatantly derivative) little ditty, a floaty piece of California psychedelia packed with Beatles-esque melting harmonies and a tinny sax solo, the French guys totally re-imagine the song as an exercise in hard dance-pop. Its tetchy, stomping beat seems to almost make fun of the original “Let Love Rule’s” hippie-dippie aspirations. Call it a remix as implicit rebuke.

Then there’s the video. Set to the closing credits of a fake action movie, it’s one of the more original clips of the year. Names and titles scroll vertically across the screen for the duration of the video in what is clearly the denouement of what's supposed to be some lame shoot-‘em-up. Except here, the words have the unique ability to trip up and disrupt the people and things surrounding them.

All in all, a nice companion piece to Justice’s darkly sensational video for “Stress” from May ’08.

-- Chris Lee

Photo: Screen grab from the video "Justice - Let Love Rule (Lenny Kravitz Remix)" from Keith Schofield; Credit: Virgin Records

HARD Haunted Mansion finds new location, expands to two days

After more than 18,000 concertgoers discovered that the Forum was not the ideal locale for an electro-powered dance party at the semi-disastrous HARD Summer party, promoter Gary Richards and the HARD team have announced the long-awaited details for the upcoming Halloween event.

The 2009 HARD Haunted Mansion party is now set for the Shrine in Los Angeles, and has expanded into a two-day event beginning Oct. 30 and continuing on Halloween. The Shrine was actually the location of the HARD Summer event in 2008, which featured N.E.R.D, Spank Rock and Amanda Blank.

The Friday night line-up is topped by controversial dance music upstart Deadmau5, alongside 2 Many DJs, DJ A-Trak, the Bloody Beetroots and more.