In terms of bleep-bloop music, few do it better than the French. Over the past decade, Pedro Winter's Paris-based Ed Banger Records has dropped some of house music's dopest seven- and twelve-inches, CDs and MP3s.
Celebrated as one of electronic music's most prominent labels, the Ed Banger family of artists is both extensive and impressive, including DJs like SebastiAn, Mr. Orzio, and Miami-born Uffie as well as Krazy Baldheld, Cassius, and the late DJ Mehdi.
However, Banger's biggest stars -- commercially, at least -- are Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, the French house duo internationally known as Justice.
This tag-team broke onto the scene in 2007 with its critically acclaimed debut, †, and breakthrough hit, "D.A.N.C.E." as Rolling Stone described Justice as the definition of "new-jacques swing," techno punks who "go straight for the jugular" with "loads of melodrama and not a moment of subtlety."
It took Justice four years to release a follow-up record, Audio, Video, Disco, which dropped in October 2011. And while record is softer than its predecessor, Audio, Video, Disco is "emotionally heavy," as de Rosnay told Exclaim magazine, "without being aggressive."
"It's a disco opera, although it's probably less disco in the sense that we didn't make it so key. We tried to make this record not too groovy, but with really simple movements. We were still aiming at making the same kind of opera record, but just [according to] what we think is the pop music of today. When we made this record, we wanted to create something very laid-back and a bit countryside-ish. You know, daytime music."
But Audio, Video, Disco is anything but daytime exclusive. Justice is co-headlining Ultra on Saturday night, rounding out a group of EDM heavy hitters like Avicii, Duck Sauce and Fatboy Slim. So despite what de Rosnay may say, Justice works well at all hours of the day.
Ultra Music Festival 2012. Friday, March 23, to Sunday, March 25. Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets are sold out. Visit ultramusicfestival.com.
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