Justice: The Return

Mixmag: When did you last DJ?

Xavier: We DJ about twice a year and the last time was in a stadium in South Korea. It was great. I had no idea we had such a fanbase there. We don’t make music we like to DJ with and we don’t DJ music we like to make. They’re two different things. There’s finally a couple of tracks we can definitely DJ with on the new album – ‘Alakazam!’, ‘Heavy Metal, ‘Love SOS’ – I’m sure they’d work.

Mixmag: So how have you been spending your time since we last heard from you, which was when the ‘Audio, Video, Disco’ tour ended at the start of 2013?

Xavier: Looking after our children, enjoying life.

Mixmag: Do you have any hobbies? Sports? Gym? Long holidays abroad?

Xavier: No sport, no gym. We just enjoy life. Sport and the gym are not part of our way of enjoying life.

Mixmag: Well, you both look very healthy. As rock stars, shouldn’t you be a little more worn by drink, drugs and the rest?

Xavier: We’ve always been healthy, but it’s not like we’re becoming Sting or Moby. We’ve always understood the difference between life when touring in a band and real life. We’ve never mixed up the two, never thought we’re the actual guys that go on stage and do those things.

Mixmag: Are you political animals?

Xavier: No, especially not as a band. We have a few rules and one of them is to never talk about politics.

Mixmag: So if we wanted to know your thoughts on Brexit would that count as a political question?

Xavier: Definitely.

Mixmag: How do you feel about the tempo of dance music slowing in the last decade or so?

Xavier: I never go to clubs.

Gaspard: My guess is that it’s just that the drugs have changed.

Xavier: It’s reminiscent of nu-metal and rap metal, the most powerful music you can possibly make. It’s the same tempo but polyrhythmic so you never know if it’s very fast or very slow. All these tracks in the new electronic scene also have one element that’s very fast, which makes them powerful.

Justice are pondering what their earliest memories are...

“Listening to the first Suicide album when I was six,” jokes Xavier (at 34, he wasn’t born when it came out in 1977). “OK, really it was dreaming of black butterflies because I used to have a butterfly mobile over my baby-bed.”

“Mine is that I went to a flea market with my mother,” recalls Gaspard, who’s 37. “At one stall, out of the blue, a vendor gave me a crucifix.”

This is apt, given the band’s longstanding predilection for giant crosses. Raised in the Parisian suburbs, they met in 2002, although they claim to have had parallel childhoods – “not bullied or bullies. Discreet” – and left school with good results.

“All through the year we’d be in the lower ranks, then when we needed to pass an exam, we both finished first in everything,” says Xavier. “We worked when we needed to but the rest of the time we chilled out. Just like now [laughs].”

They were at the very beginning of careers in graphic design, hobbying in iffy bands (Xavier as a guitarist/bassist, Gaspard as a drummer) when, as everyone knows, they entered a remix competition for the song ‘Never Be Alone’ by the British band Simian. Their version didn’t win, but was signed by Pedro ‘Busy P’ Winter, and better known as ‘We Are Your Friends’, it became one of the biggest crossover club tracks ever, and launched both Justice and Ed Banger on the world.

Mixmag: So, Pet Shop Boys or Depeche Mode?

Xavier: Neither of them. We know one or two songs of each band but right now I’m unable to think of one or sing it.

Gaspard: I’d go for Depeche Mode.

Mixmag: Last time we spoke, five years ago, you said you didn’t listen to contemporary music. Is that still true?

Xavier: We’re not hermetic. Maybe we said that because that period was not as rich in new music. Making the last album we were listening to Led Zeppelin and ELO, but the dynamic then was different. That album was more like a small encyclopaedia of music we wanted to inject into our own music, but on this new record everything is spontaneous. Right now there are new things we like. I’m listening a lot to Miguel’s ‘The Valley’ which sounds like Nine Inch Nails. It has a grunge 90s sensibility.

Mixmag: Scarlett Johansson or 1960s Brigitte Bardot?

Xavier: Scarlett Johansson, definitely.

Gaspard: I have a lot of respect for Brigitte Bardot because she didn’t indulge in facial surgery or this awful dream of eternal youth. It’s kind of cool she just aged the way she did.

Xavier: Every woman and every man should age that way. Our music is the same. It sounds like us as we made it. We’re not trying to make youth music and it would be ridiculous if we tried to be the new club sensation.

Gaspard: We’re not running after what’s fresh, new and hip. You’re always too late if you do that.

Mixmag: You mentioned ELO earlier. We saw Jeff Lynne’s ELO play Glastonbury. He had the charisma of a lettuce.

Xavier: That’s always been the case, but, at the same time, the guy’s really good. We watched a documentary about him recently and we really want to hang out with him. OK, he’s not Mick Jagger, he’s this studio wizard, but you can’t ask him to be both.

Gaspard: The thing is, we love the way he writes songs.

Xavier: He’s funny and witty when you hear him talking. He’s not so much a performer, he’s a producer, he’s the archetype, and there are not many that good – even today. His new album ‘Alone In The Universe’ shows that he can still do it.

Mixmag: Have you ever been in awe of anyone you’ve been introduced to?

Both: Rick Rubin was great!

Xavier: In 2008 we were in Los Angeles. We used to know Diplo’s manager and he told us, “Rick Rubin would like to meet you,” so we went round his house. It’s not that we were star-struck, more that we were impressed. Of course, when you know everything he’s made, it’s hard not to be. He was so up-to-date and curious. It felt like we were talking to a guy from our generation.