Tag: ed banger records

Various Artists – Ed Rec Vol. 2 [2007; Because Music, Ed Banger Records, Vice Records, Wagram Music]

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Released the same year as Justice’s debut album, this compilation features tracks from them and their label-mates on the French label of Ed Banger Records, with French house
being the primary flavor,

while hip-hop, electro, hard techno, and turntablism influences float about freely.  Stiff buzzes, glossy touch-ups, manic percussion, and odd-beat but funky rhythms fill the music, most of it eschewing vocals. 

Tone slides, lo-fi samples, and over-amping lend things a generally buzzy feel, which helps mask the heavy amounts of production that went into the electronic pieces with gritty patinas and forceful kicks.  A good tour through the electronic stage of the era, with most of the tracks still sounding ahead of their time, and an enjoyable batch of lively electronica even without that context.

Justice – Audio, Video, Disco. [2011; Because Music, Ed Banger Records, Elektra, Warner Music Japan, Никитин]

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For their second studio album, Justice shed the nocturnal atmosphere of † in favor of peppier moods and song styles which draw from ‘80s pop prog, a la Genesis, by way of spangly electric guitar wankery and pseudo-spiritual posturing and shallow sociological pondering.  Though they keep the short audio cuts and strong beats of the first album, the overt sampling is lower, and the synths generally feel more hammered-down in comparison to the buzzy aggression of their earlier usage.  Those changes don’t keep the band from turning out several memorable tunes, though, even if the earworminess comes down to a hooky main riff over the full song’s shaping more often than not.

That lackluster song-writing seems all the more strange in the face of the apparent care for arranging the tracks within the album, with a loose narrative told through song titles and a separated intro for one of the central songs.  The production work is stellar, though, and a trio of guest vocalists add to the grand assembly vibes, but in the end, it feels a little too aimless and overwrought to fit either its affected antiquity or wallowings in retro-pop excess.