[Review] Justice- Live at the o2 Academy Bristol (Published at Fearoffiction.com Feb 2012)

Over the past few hundred years the French have given us many things.

They provided us with a bafflingly large selection of foul smelling dairy products, aptly introduced words like abandon, quit and surrender into our language and even let Walt Disney gain a posthumous stranglehold on Europe.

As far as I’m concerned all of these things pale in comparison to the glorious gift they bestowed upon the world in 1996.

The release of Daft Punk’s first album Homework was a catalyst for a French dance music scene that was up until that point fairly insular. Their manager Pedro ‘Busy P’ Winter was the man who capitalised on the boom, and after managing everyone under the sun went on to form the now worldwide phenomenon that is Ed Banger records.

Ed Banger’s second release was the infamous Never Be Alone by a couple of Parisian remix 

competition winners calling themselves Justice.

And the rest, as they say, is your mother’s brother.

Considering the worldwide phenomenon that was their 2007 debut album ‘†’, Justice haven’t really been hogging the limelight of late and they’d be forgiven for misplacing their enthusiasm like we’d be excused for feigning ours. The sheer amount of makeshift, glow stick crucifixes on show at Bristol’s o2 Academy showed otherwise. Sporadic shouts of “Justice” reminded me of that horribly messy court case my uncle had to endure recently and when the sea of people below me started jumping and swaying I thought someone had slipped me a Mickey.

From the opening gambit of ‘Genesis’ you knew it was going to be big. The massive synth laden orchestra of it’s intro ringing out like a giant mechanised Godzilla was preparing to terrorise the room. After an almost mandatory hiatus of the drop a truly epic light display lit up a thousand beaming grins and the ground started shaking under the whim of two thousand ecstatic feet. 

Tracks like ‘Stress’ and Justice’s own remix of ‘D.A.N.C.E’ went off like a block of Camembert left in the sun, and the football chant accompaniment to ‘Phantom Pt. 2’s bass line was just glorious.

The music being a given, the highlight of the evening’s entertainment had to be watching  a rack of Marshall amps I scoffed about not being plugged in to anything suddenly light up to form a huge video display with loads and loads of pretty colours on it.

After orchestrating a final, wonderfully shouty chorus of “We are your friends…” as the summation of a twenty minute encore, the pompous facade finally crumbled and the leather clad pair set about shaking hands with their adoring crowd absolutely beaming and genuinely humbled.

It may not have been the biggest gig they’ve played but it had to be one of the warmest receptions,  

and although they’ve been off the radar a little as of late, anyone watching a show as monumentally impressive as that will have them at the forefront of their minds for some time.

Cheese, words, Euro Disney, Daft Punk and Justice.

Yeah, I reckon that just about covers it.

[Review] Burial- Kindred EP (Published in Now Then issue 48 Feb 2012)

I’d be quite happy if Four Tet rubbed off on me. For the purposes of inspiration of course. I’m not keen on sharing a bed with Kieran Hebden and his abnormally large head. I’d like to spend an evening taking his plug-ins. You know, bear a mutual brainchild. What I mean is he uses a lot of defunct analogue instruments and I’d like to go round to his and work really hard before backing up onto a floppy.

In 2009 William Bevan or, as he’s known to his mum, ‘Burial’ collaborated with Hebden on what I genuinely considered to be “the best tune I’ve ever heard”. Now don’t get me wrong, Burial is a right royal virtuoso as it is, but when he and Four Tet collaborated on ‘Moth’ something very special happened. Bevan’s trademark counterpoint of dusty clicks and wooshy noises were reigned in with the dance music staple of a 4/4 time signature. They say beauty is repetition and it’s the beautiful repetition of a beautifully repetitive hook that repeatedly makes me think that ‘Moth’ is beautiful.

Last year’s Street Halo was arguably Burial’s best yet due to its prevalent 4/4 theme and his new release tops it for the same reasons. The title track ‘Kindred’ is old school Burial fare - an enormous droning bass line, 2-step rhythm and a huge suspended vocal hook.

Second track ‘Loner’ is where things get interesting. A primitive Casio house beat and a huge rave inspired arpeggio sit atop Burial’s trademark crackles, snaps and pops, giving the track the feel of listening to a happy hardcore mix on a gramophone.

But my money is on ‘Ashtray Wasp’. The track actually starts off with a pitched down sample of the synth hook from 2007’s album track ‘Endorphin’ before a mystery female vocal clip uttering the words “Alright, bye” slices through the ambience. Bidding farewell to his previous style of production couldn’t be more apt. A swinging house beat, a floating fairground arpeggio, nods to AFX’s acid house twiddlings, 90s vocal stabs, and an outro who’s desperate screams of “FOUR TET!” are masked under low fidelity clicks, crumbling samples and demi-octaved field recordings.

400 words isn’t enough to go into as much depth as I would like. This release is exquisite. I’m not saying collaborating with Four Tet has made Burial a better musician. I just feel it made him appreciate the beauty of repetition and if you can repeatedly make something beautiful then I will dutifully pay for the opportunity to play something beautiful... on repeat.

[Review] Pinch- Fabriclive.61 (Published in Now Then Issue 46 Jan 2012)

I’ve never been to Fabric. It’s not like I didn’t want to or anything. Who wouldn’t want to stand on a dancefloor that vibrates the music through your bones? Your bones, for Pete’s sake! The closest I ever got to that were those lollipops that played the radio through your teeth.

I just never got around to it is all. I knew exactly what it sounded like in there though. I’ve been an advocate of the Fabriclive mix range since I first heard Jacques Lu Cont expertly weave together Fabriclive.09.

After that Adam Freeland beat the grey stuff out of my head with his heavy electro and breaks driven Fabriclive.16, Aim hugged me through every quiet night shift with Fabriclive.17, Evil Nine made me feel a bit funny in the trousers with Fabriclive.28 and Justice made me appreciate camp French disco with the very different and frankly brilliant Fabriclive.37, which was rejected in favour of Caspa & Rusko.

For a long time these mixes were a platform for carefully selected DJs to entertain you with their ideal night out. They were always fun and never took themselves as seriously as their sister ‘Fabric’ mixes - all apart from No. 23, which we don’t talk about because it doesn’t fit in with what I just said and I don’t want to look like an idiot.

It’s pretty hard to extract artistic merit from a varied selection of songs that come from a varied selection of musicians, unless of course they’re embarrassingly well mixed, or if the artist does what I like to call a ‘Kalkbrenner’ and just plays their own tracks for an hour and a half.

Neither of those things has happened here. Nor is it in the least bit fun. The tone of the release is dark and sparse, packed to the gills with a style of under-produced bass music that is somehow still popular. There’s even a bit of ‘wob’ in the form of ‘Blue Meanie’ by Distance, which sounds even more out of place on this mix than that particular brand of noise does within the nation’s collective psyche.

Having said all that, this is the only place you’ll be able to get a full three minutes of Boddika & Joy O’s ‘Swims’ for quite a while. Every cloud, and all that.

I’ve no doubt there are people out there who will thoroughly enjoy this mix. Unfortunately I just didn’t have enough ketamine on me to really get the most out of it.