CMJ 2006: Saturday (J.U.S.T.I.C.E.)
The last day of CMJ 2006 was all about one thing: JUSTICE. Sure, Syd and I hit up the packed BrooklynVegan day party to check out Tokyo Police Club for a bit (and they certainly didn’t disappoint), but at no point did my thoughts drift from the spectacle I would be witnessing that night at Studio B.
MP3: “Nature of the Experiment” - Tokyo Police Club ((highly recommended))
And now, onto the main event…
JUSTICE + DIGITALISM @ STUDIO B
Before CMJ I’d never seen a single electronic act live, a tragedy considering how much I love electronic music. By week’s end though, I’d seen two of the best in the game right now, and if it weren’t for the Knife’s mind-blowing opening night performance I’d probably be able to declare the Justice show as the most fun I’ve had since catching Bloc Party twice earlier this summer.
Digitalism opened on the side stage, two innocuous looking dudes pumping out massive beats to a crowd who was already into it. I wasn’t terribly familiar with Digitalism outside of their contributions to the Kitsune Maison compilation series (which, upon further inspection, appears to be the majority of their recorded material) and a few of their incredible remixes, but was psyched to see them nonetheless, as I’ve got nothing but undying respect for the Kitsune Records label to which they are signed. As a result of my unfamiliarity with most of their material, nothing really jumped out at me from their set except, though this didn’t prevent me from enjoying it immensely. If Digitalism’s set proved anything though, it’s that I really need to be hitting up electronic shows more often as much as possible, as I had an absolutely awesome time despite not recognizing almost everything I heard, which I can’t say for most shows I go to. Here’s Digitalism’s most recent single, “Idealistic”, as well as his two finest remixes to date. I’m especially fond of that “Nothing But Green Lights” ish they dropped for Tom Vek.
MP3s:
“Idealistic” (Original Mix) - Digitalism
“Nothing But Green Lights” (Digitalism Mix) - Tom Vek ((highly recommended))
“Atlantis To Interzone” (Digitalism’s Klix Klax Remix) - Klaxons
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And then it was time for the two most bad ass dudes in NYC that night to do their thing. While the Knife at least attempted to give the illusion of being a real band, standing behind their “instruments” and beating them in time with the music, Justice didn’t fuck around with any pretense. They were just two cooler-than-cool dudes from Paris, and they were gonna bring the hot jams, drop the pressure, smoke cigarettes in the DJ booth, and make you hurt in all the best ways.
I’m assuming this is fairly standard among DJ sets of this nature, but the best part of the show was the way in which the duo used these incredible unreleased remixes to segue between their actual songs and official remix work. Gaspard and Xavier, or “The Mustache” and “The China” as their apparently called, opened to the set with an extended reworking of the siren noises of Klaxons’ “Atlantis To Interzone”, which appears to be the hot track to remix these days (seriously, how many incredible remixes of this song are floating around right now), before launching immediately into the massive, grimy electronic surges of their molten-hot debut single “Waters of Nazareth”. I won’t pretend like I can remember exactly how their set went from there, but I can assure you it consisted of nothing but pure, unadultered fucktronica hotness. Highlights included some incredible unofficial remixes, though it was their remix of the Scissor Sisters “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” and an awesome reworking of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” that stand out.
But the track on everyone’s mind was Justice vs Simian’s “We Are Your Friends”; everyone knew it was coming at some point and the anticipation was tangible. Surely aware of this, Justice toyed with the audience, inserting the immediately-recognizable synth surges that open the track into random parts of their set, eliciting a brief cheer before they would immediately move onto their next track. Finally, a good hour or so in, Simian vocalist Simon Lord’s distinct yelps rang out over the audience as Justice dropped the needle on the hottest dance record of the millenium, and the place went fucking bonkers. Seriously, shit was out of control, with everyone screaming out the chorus at the top of their lungs and moving like there was no tomorrow. To be perfectly accurate, it looked a little something like this. Just look at that pandemonium. Justice did their part to get the crowd into it (as if they weren’t already) by muting the instrumentation at all the right moments in the chorus as the crowd shouted out the words instead, and after “We Are Your Friends” concluded it was pretty much game over. People were having the time of their lives - flailing limbs, smiles plastered across their faces, sweat everywhere; it was just a ridiculous time. The rest of the set continued the ridiculously high standard set by the first half, with their remix of Franz Ferdinand’s “The Fallen” standing out as a straight-up murderous highlight. “The Fallen” remix is easily the best of Justice’s remix work (obviously excluding their career-defining “We Are Your Friends” mix) and is without a doubt one of the year’s elite remixes, with the duo completely gutting the original and chopping up Alex Kaprano’s vocals until the original’s but a distant (and dare I say inferior?) memory.
As much as I hate to say it, it was around this point that I left. Yes, I left the bangin’-est show I’ve ever been to. But by that point Justice had been churning out hot fire for damn near two hours and the clock was creeping towards 4 AM, and with the knowledge that NYC cab drivers change shifts at 4 I knew I had to get out of there soon before I was stranded in Green Point for the night. As it was, I had to bribe an already-off-duty cab driver with $20 to take me over the bridge into Alphabet City after having already walked about 15 blocks, but suffice it to say, the opportunity to witness Justice absolutely destroying the crowd in their first-ever set on American soil (can I get confirmation of this?) was well worth it.
MP3s:
“Waters of Nazareth” - Justice ((HIGHLY recommended))
“We Are Your Friends” - Justice vs Simian ((HIGHLY recommended))
“Smack My Bitch Up” (Justice Mix) - The Prodigy
“The Fallen” (Ruined By Justice) - Justice ((highly recommended))
You’ll notice I’ve included the Justice treatment of “Smack My Bitch Up” in the downloadable mp3s above, but it’s not an official release, as I ripped it from their September 2005 DJ set at Trash in London. Keep in mind, this is from earlier in their brief career and doesn’t do, er, justice to their near-perfected current live show. Keep an ear out from two hot reworkings of Prodigy at around the 6- and 19-minute marks (the latter of which you can download individually above), the highlight of the set, “Waters of Nazareth”, at the 34-minute mark and Simian’s original edit of “Never Be Alone” (which went on to yield “We Are Your Friends”) squeezing itself in there in the final minute.
I recently came across an awesome remix of “Waters of Nazareth” courtesy of Philly’s John Redden that might actually surpass Erol Alkan’s remix of the track, an impressive feat considering that 2006 has essentially been considered the year of the Erol in most electronic music circles, so you should defs grab that below. And why not, I also threw in Justice’s touch-up of Mystery Jets’ “You Can’t Fool Me Dennis”, since I’ve been way into the ‘Jets as of late.
Bonus MP3s:
“Justice DJ Set @ Trash, 09.12.05″ - Justice
“Waters of Nazareth” (Jhn Rdn Remix) - Justice
“You Can’t Fool Me Dennis” (Justice Remix) - Mystery Jets
And that concludes my coverage of CMJ 2006, as exhaustive as it may have been. Things will resume tomorrow as per usual, with an especially hot first post back to reward you for your patience throughout the never-ending technical difficulties we’ve had around here.