{"id":141199,"date":"2025-03-11T21:06:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T01:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/03\/11\/justice-reflect-on-hyperdrama-success-its-going-much-better-than-we-thought-it-would\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T21:06:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T01:06:39","slug":"justice-reflect-on-hyperdrama-success-its-going-much-better-than-we-thought-it-would","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/03\/11\/justice-reflect-on-hyperdrama-success-its-going-much-better-than-we-thought-it-would\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Reflect on \u2018Hyperdrama\u2019 Success: \u201cIt\u2019s Going Much Better Than We Thought It\u00a0Would\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tIt\u2019s a warm Saturday night in Phoenix, Ariz. and the crowd is a mass of kinetic energy as Justice<\/a> drops \u201cAudio, Video, Disco,\u201d a song that effectively sends the thousands of people assembled in front of the stage into collective overdrive. Fists thrust into the desert air as the song\u2019s \u201caudioooooo!\u201d lyric swells in time with the kickdrum and lights\u00a0\u2014 a primal response that\u2019s essentially programmed into the show.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Justice\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tJustice Earns First Radio No. 1 With Tame Impala Collaboration \u2018Neverender\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s almost mathematics, almost pure physics, what makes people dance,\u201d says the duo\u2019s Xavier du Rosnay. \u201c[Making] the live show was like white coat scientist work, because we were preparing the music and thinking \u2018Okay, if we add 16 more bars of this, it will make the crowd response more efficient.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJustice has toured the U.S., Europe and Central American with this precise configuration of beats, lights, lasers, mirrors and music for the last 11 months, since releasing their fourth album, Hyperdrama<\/em>, on April 26, 2024. The tour began with a headlining set at Coachella\u2019s Outdoor Stage, where the French duo established another show routine now as predictable as the audience freakouts.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the Phoenix set, du Rosney and Gaspard Aug\u00e9 jump offstage and spend a solid 10 minutes high fiving and shaking hands with audience members who\u2019ve pressed themselves up against the barricades to make contact. Ever cool, the sunglasses the guys have worn for the duration of the show stay on, but after remaining physically stoic for the duration the 90-minute performance, they now smile as they say their hellos.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe show is very cold in a way,\u201d du Rosnay says a few days prior in Los Angeles, where Justice is spending a few days between performances. \u201cWe don\u2019t interact with the crowd for three reasons: The first is that it\u2019s not in our character. We\u2019re not like, stage people, you know? Second, we are very focused on what we\u2019re doing. And then, every time we get excited and try putting a bit of emphasis in the way we move onstage and then watch the video after\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAug\u00e9 moves his hand slightly and laughs, indicating that their onstage motions haven\u2019t been quite grand enough to convey their enthusiasm. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo at the end we go meet [the crowd] to say thank you,\u201d du Rosnay continues, \u201cbecause we don\u2019t get the opportunity to say that during the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor both fans and actual members of Justice, there is currently a lot to be thankful for. Last year at this time, Hyperdrama <\/em>and its attendant live show were finished but unreleased, and du Rosnay and Aug\u00e9 were managing expectations, saying in a Billboard <\/em>cover story<\/a> last April that they \u201chad no idea\u201d who the average Justice fan was or how people would respond to the music from Hyperdrama<\/em>, the followup to 2016\u2019s Woman.<\/em> It\u2019s now all much clearer. <\/p>\n

\n\tHyperdrama <\/em>has been exceptionally well-received by critics and longtime fans and has helped open the duo up to new audiences through the duo\u2019s first ever chart hit, \u201cNeverender.\u201d Ubiquitous in 2024, the collab with Tame Impala\u2019s Kevin Parker marked Justice\u2019s first ever radio No. 1, reaching the top<\/a> of Alternative Airplay last month. It\u2019s also re-entered Hot Rock & Alternative songs this week, currently sitting<\/a> at No. 39 on the chart. The song also won<\/a> the Grammy for Best Dance\/Electronic Recording at the Awards last month. Meanwhile \u201cWake Me Up,\u201d their collaboration with The Weeknd out on the latter artist\u2019s January album Hurry Up Tomorrow<\/em>, gave Justice<\/a> the first Hot 100 hit of their nearly 20-year career.<\/p>\n

\"Justice\"
Justice
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\n\tMeanwhile the Hyperdrama<\/em> tour is a face-melting cathedral assembled of kaleidoscopic lights, a rig that takez a 30-person team to operate \u2014 and which is so intense that the show is preceded by a warning that it \u201cmay cause discomfort and\/or seizures for those with photosensitive epilepsy.\u201d The show has turned new fans into believers and pre-existing fans into zealots. (In Phoenix, nearly every person I talk to in the crowd has seen the show at least once before.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going much better than we thought it would, and we\u2019re very appreciative of that,\u201d says du Rosnay. But while reaching radio and winning awards is all exciting, the guys seem primarily delighted by meeting their fans, with du Rosnay and Aug\u00e9 finding that they really like the people who really like them. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOn tour when we do pop-up stores or events, we don\u2019t do it in the hope of selling 20 more t-shirts if we show up to the store,\u201d says du Rosnay. \u201cWe do it first as sign of gratitude for the people who show up, and also because we\u2019re curious to see who those people are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd they are so lovely,\u201d Aug\u00e9 continues. \u201cThey make homemade stickers, fanzines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd the main thing we noticed that\u2019s made us very happy,\u201d continues du Rosnay, \u201cis that the crowd is much more diverse than it used to be in age, in gender, in every way. We see a lot more people who are not just like us. That\u2019s the thing that\u2019s made us the happiest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJustice fans, a demographic that began assembling when the guys released its era-defining debut single \u201cWe Are Your Friends\u201d in 2006, have had ample opportunity to see and meet Justice. The guys have played more than five dozen festival and standalone dates on the Hyperdrama<\/em> tour. Aug\u00e9 says they\u2019ll likely tour the show until this December. After that, du Rosnay says that \u2014 as they have for previous tours \u2014 they\u2019ll \u201cpick a date and then dismantle everything\u201d related to the live production \u201cso that there can\u2019t even be the temptation of saying yes to anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, however, they\u2019ve got more than upcoming dates throughout South America, the U.S. and Europe, with the stretch including headlining slots at festivals including Bonnaroo and Electric Forest. The operation is now smoother than its Coachella debut, when the guys were \u201cso anxious and stressed,\u201d about unveiling the production, du Rosnay says that \u201cwe were basically paralyzed on stage. We were just so focused and stressed thinking \u2018okay, don\u2019t fuck this up\u2019 that we could barely move.\u201d (While du Rosnay says there were some slight technical hiccups during this first show, they were not apparent to the naked eye.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe nerves have decreased as the tour has moved through festivals and standalone shows at venues including The Holllywood Bowl and the Accor Arena in Justice\u2019s native Paris. Setlists collect classics like \u201cDVNO,\u201d \u201cGenesis\u201d and \u201cD.A.N.C.E.\u201d alongside new tracks like \u201cNeverender,\u201d Woman\u201d and \u201cMannequin Love,\u201d the latter of which builds to a place of disco ecstasy, bolstered by the swirling shimmer of lights happening in tandem. Generally too, the show has become heavier and more ferocious, with the similarly chaotic \u201cStress\u201d and \u201cGenerator\u201d \u2014 spiritually similar tracks released 17 years apart \u2014 both getting major play.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tStaff List: The 50 Best Dance Tracks of\u00a02024\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tIn fact Aug\u00e9 calls this latter track, from Hyperdrama<\/em>, \u201cthe barometer for if the show is going to get crazy. If the crowd reacts as it should\u201d when the song is introduced early in the set, he says, \u201cYou can really feel the room vibrating, and you know it\u2019s going be a good show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother element of the performance that\u2019s changed is their outfits. The tour began with du Rosnay and Auge both wearing sharply cut white suits from, naturally, French fashion house Celine. Then last fall, \u201cWe had this talk with our friend Gesaffelstein,\u201d du Rosay says, referring to the revered French producer who\u2019s also been on tour this year, playing his show in a sparkly black suit and a black mask with eyes that glow red. \u201cHe has an amazing character on stage. He looks so good. We were talking about how far you can go in terms of dressing up on stage. We\u2019re not shy, but we don\u2019t feel that it\u2019s necessary to be over the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut with Gesaffelstein as inspiration, that thinking evolved. \u201cAfter all,\u201d du Rosnay says, \u201cit\u2019s meant to be fun and over the top.\u201d He and Aug\u00e9 reconvened with the team at Celine and asked for something \u201cmore visible.\u201d While Celine had previously suggested gold suits,\u00a0\u201cWe were like, \u2018No, we don\u2019t do gold.\u2019 Then we went back like, \u2018Let\u2019s do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Justice
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\n\tOne song that\u2019s yet to make it into the live show is \u201cWake Me Up,\u201d a track Justice made with The Weeknd for the latter artist\u2019s January album Hurry Up Tomorrow<\/em>. (The release bore out the long-gestating rumors that the pair was working on something together.) The Weeknd first texted the duo \u201cin 2021 or 2022,\u201d recalls du Rosnay, asking them \u201cto make something that sounded like an opening track, like classical music, and something very solemn.\u201d They created this custom order and included a bonus 10 seconds of music that they thought could work for a drop.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe told him \u2018Okay, that\u2019s the intro you asked for, but just for your information, it could go into something else,\u201d recalls du Rosnay. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Yeah, give me more of the thing that comes after.\u201d They went back and forth on the song for a year, with the final product sampling English songwriter Rod Temperton and evoking the heavy mood of Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cThriller.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of other forthcoming releases, the guys neither confirm or deny that they\u2019re doing a live album for Hyperdrama,<\/em> as they\u2019ve done for all three of their previous LPs. Du Rosnay says they\u2019re \u201cthinking about it and just trying to find a way of putting it together.\u201d He acknowledges that while \u201cthe metrics have shown us that nobody cares about our live albums,\u201d that\u2019s not exactly true, given that their 2018 live LP Woman Worldwide<\/em> won the Grammy for best dance\/electronic album. (Beyond that, du Rosnay says they have \u201cno idea\u201d when they\u2019ll make another studio album, joking that given the five years between Audio, Video, Disco<\/em> and Woman<\/em>, and the eight years between Woman <\/em>and Hyperdrama<\/em>, it might be \u201c10 or 12 years.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut despite the thrill of their live shows, as captured on previous albums and experienced by scores of people around the world, Justice does not, du Rosnay says, \u201chave a passion for being on stage.\u201d Rather, the effort is a function of \u201cwanting to make something cool and to show it to people\u201d and also because live shows are, He continues, \u201cour breadwinning thing,\u201d with theses financial considerations now especially important given the high cost of post-pandemic touring.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut while the songs are charting, the tickets are selling, the suits are shinier and there are more awards on the shelf, the current priorities are the same as they\u2019ve always been. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSame thing as before the album, or, like, 10 years ago,\u201d du Rosnay says of what\u2019s curently most important to Justice. \u201cIt\u2019s to be happy, to be proud of what we do and comfortable with what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are so many things happening in these cycles that without noticing, you might start doing things that you aren\u2019t comfortable with,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt\u2019s really easy, you know? You make one slight drift, and then you make another, and then three weeks later you\u2019re doing something you thought you would never do in your life. So being at ease with what we\u2019re doing, being proud and being happy, that\u2019s the important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a warm Saturday night in Phoenix, Ariz. and the crowd is a mass of kinetic energy as Justice drops \u201cAudio, Video, Disco,\u201d a song that effectively sends the thousands of people assembled in front of the stage into collective overdrive. Fists thrust into the desert air as the song\u2019s \u201caudioooooo!\u201d lyric swells in time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}