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At its core, Cross is loud, restless, and daring. A creative tour de force, Justice have unleashed an era-defining album for the children of acid house.
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An engaging study in contrasts and a killer party record.
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90They've totally nailed it.
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Rough-edged and overdriven in the right places, super-slick as their Reagan-era new-wave touchstones elsewhere, this pomo-funk concoction from Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is like a French kiss from Sonny Crockett.
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84Cross is a harsh and mostly instrumental set that nonetheless plays like the ideal crossover electronic-pop record. Justice knows how to sequence a dance album to avoid drag and boredom.
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83If you want to get in on the ground floor of something good, then check out Cross and see where Justice leads; with cuts like these, it will certainly not take long until they're all over the place, in commercials, on the radio, and on TV.
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Cross is a big party record with a few exciting beats, as well as one of the few examples of desirable audio clipping.
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80Justice essentially have two modes: funky techno built with filthy overdriven synth sounds and gleefully daft disco/'80s pastiche so shiny as to be almost reflective. Both are held together with a studio rigour that makes the record bounce out of the speakers so forcefully that the moments of synthesis, where the sound coheres into its trademark elastic groove, become utterly addictive.
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Justice know when to curtail the industrial strike and dazzle you with some star-skipping pop-chime, or a warble of gloopy future funk, before tossing you back into the unlit mire.
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80“Waters Of Nazareth” yawns like a car crusher, mashing hip-hop, electro and funk into gleaming slabs of sound, while “D.A.N.C.E” displays a lighter touch, channelling Chic disco in a whirl of sugary keyboards and euphoric violin stabs.
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80Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé employ everything from ominous Christian iconography to slick future sounds to prop up their aura of overarching coolness.
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Admirably random samples dug up from underground sources like '70s Italian prog-rockers Goblin, combined with a reckless abandon and an adherence to melodic hooks, makes Cross one of the most interesting electro-crossovers since Ratatat, and the guys in Justice do an excellent job building on Daft Punk's innovative foundation.
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80The grooves are gnarly and congested, the synth riffs are distorted howls and the samples are torn from Devo and horror-soundtracking prog-rockers Goblin.
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80The whole album is solid, save for Uffie's questionable club princess rap, and even that sounds better with repeated listens.
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80Justice does appear to be that rare breed of dance artist equally capable of stimulating the body and the mind, though neither Richard James nor the Basement Jaxx need fear this act.
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80Layers of production can obscure the organic--or at least faux-organic--sounds of a ripping performance. That's not the case on the debut full-length album from French house duo Justice, whose complex, dark, and heavily pop-rock-influenced dance tracks span banging disco grooves to instrumental electro-funk space operas to minimalist hip-hop.
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80Cross is an album that applies a modern Big Beat aesthetic to an army of ‘80s keyboards. Because of this, the album never sounds dated, but always familiar.
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Perhaps the most successful aspect of Cross is its appeal on both the dance floor and the headphones, the pounding rhythms complemented by the nuanced detail of the arrangements and unified flow of mood.
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70Ultimately, Justice is another example of rearranging and reshuffling the devices of the past, but with complete understanding of their effectiveness to a point that sounds fresh.
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It's all very controlled, as any functional dance club record should be, and its quality extends past its single, as any decent-to-good dance club record should be.
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With loads of melodrama and not a moment of subtlety, Justice define the new-jacques swing.
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Justice? Talent to spare, but that doesn't stop '†' being just another frustrating dance music album.
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60If you’re in the mood to get pummeled by simplistic, yet oh-so-effective samples and melodies, Cross does so better than most rocker-ready dance records. However, if you’re expecting to be saved by some next-level shit, this one’s not gonna cut it.
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60It stops short of SMD's effort by quite a way, but it's a fine and much welcome showing for a pair of self-professed amateurs.
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It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 42 out of 46
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Mixed: 2 out of 46
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Negative: 2 out of 46
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