Cross

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.

Cross 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.

Cross is a big party record with a few exciting beats, as well as one of the few examples of desirable audio clipping.

The grooves are gnarly and congested, the synth riffs are distorted howls and the samples are torn from Devo and horror-soundtracking prog-rockers Goblin.

Justice 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.

Cross 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.

They've totally nailed it.

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.

An engaging study in contrasts and a killer party record.

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.

“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.

Ultimately, 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.

The whole album is solid, save for Uffie's questionable club princess rap, and even that sounds better with repeated listens.

With loads of melodrama and not a moment of subtlety, Justice define the new-jacques swing.

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.

If 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.

Layers 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.

Justice 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.

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.