hypersongs

Justice

A Parisian duo, Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, whose 2007 debut Cross made them the center of Ed Banger Records, and whose "Phantom Pt. II" samples Dario Argento's Tenebre theme.

Paris and Ed Banger

Justice are Gaspard Auge, born May 21, 1979 in Besancon, and Xavier de Rosnay, born July 2, 1982 in Ozoir-la-Ferriere. Auge worked as a retro-futurist graphic designer and made home-recorded music as Microloisir; de Rosnay studied graphic design at the Ecole Estienne in Paris. They formed the duo in 2003, and made their first tracks for the compilation Hits Up to You. That year their remix of Simian's "Never Be Alone", made for a Radio Campus contest, reached Pedro Winter, the founder of Ed Banger Records and former Daft Punk manager, who released it; it became "We Are Your Friends", reached number 20 in the UK in 2006 and won the MTV Europe Music Award for best video. The cross that replaces the T in their logo is tied by French Wikipedia to "Waters of Nazareth", their first solo single, on Ed Banger in September 2005.

Cross (the album title is a cross symbol) came out on June 11, 2007 on Ed Banger and Because. They recorded it in 2005 and 2006 in Paris, producing it themselves, with heavy sampling, microsamples from about 400 albums, and called it 2007 opera-disco. Uffie sings on "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy" and Mehdi Pinson on "DVNO". It reached number 1 on the UK and US dance album charts and 11 in France, went gold in the UK in December 2011, and was nominated for Grammys for best electronic/dance album and, for "D.A.N.C.E.", best dance recording. Xavier de Rosnay has said the Juno-106 is on a lot of the songs on the first record, with very few synths because of cost.

Later records and the stage

Audio, Video, Disco followed on October 24, 2011 (number 37 on the Billboard 200), Woman on November 18, 2016, and Hyperdrama on April 26, 2024, made mostly on a PPG Wave 2.2 with guests including Tame Impala, Miguel, Thundercat and Connan Mockasin; "Neverender" with Tame Impala won a Grammy in 2025. The A Cross the Universe tour (2007 to 2008) used Ableton Live, an Akai MPD24 and a Pioneer DJM800, and was documented on a live album, DVD and film. Access All Arenas, recorded in the Arena of Nimes on July 19, 2012 and released on May 7, 2013, has no video screens, and a keyboard hidden in the cross of the stage set. They made a 60-minute live film, IRIS: A Space Opera, which premiered at SXSW on March 13, 2019. They won a Grammy in 2009 for the MGMT "Electric Feel" remix.

Pitchfork ranked Cross 15th in its 2007 top 50 and gave it 8.4, with Jess Harvell calling it the ideal crossover electronic-pop record; Rolling Stone placed "D.A.N.C.E." fourth among the songs of 2007. Their success drove Ed Banger's rise that year.

Albums

  • Cross 2007 · Ed Banger / Because

    Their debut: twelve tracks, heavily sampled, with Uffie and Mehdi Pinson as guest vocalists.

Songs

  • Phantom Pt. II Cross · 2007

    Track six of Cross, an instrumental that samples the theme from Dario Argento's Tenebre.

Sources

  1. Justice (band), Wikipedia
  2. Cross (Justice album), Wikipedia
  3. Justice, Wikipedia (French)
  4. Interview with Justice, Synth History (2025-09-11)