Is Justice off their game? “Hyperdrama”

LOOK BELOW FOR WONKY ANGLE's RESPONSE!!!

the First 13 or so minutes of this are a brief essay on the shadow of Daft Punk, then I really get into this album.

Skye's Stamp (Example Song) Dear Alan -   • Justice - Dear Alan (Official Audio)  

The Wonky Angle- The Electronic Music Reviewer I like Quite a Bit-    / thewonkyangle   ‪@TheWonkyAngle‬

The amazing Digging the Greats Video:    • The 3 Levels of Sampling in Justice's...  
‪@diggingthegreats‬

My other spam channel:    / @fromthedeskofprofessorskye  

t is interesting that you talk about parallels between the discographies of Justice and Daft Punk and highlight Human After All as being more of the black sheep that doesn't have a close parallel for you, while I personally wouldn't have said those parallels fit as much as you implied and always thought people making comparisons between the two bands were always pretty surface level, if there is one parallel between any two of their respective albums that I would've said comes closest to lining up one-to-one for me it'd be between Human After All and Audio Video Disco. I feel both of those albums showed the bands trying to strip their sound down and go for a much blunter and more simplistic sonic approach than what they'd done on their previous album, which saw both bands being met with somewhat more lukewarm critical reception at the time those projects released. people coming into HAA who loved really sonically complex tracks like Face To Face only to be disappointed by those more simplistic and repetitive and blunt tracks like Steam Machine and Brainwasher and Emotion, critics coming into AVD who loved that glitchier "microsample" sound on Cross and loved stuff like Genesis and Phantom and Stress, only to be hit by much more straightforward and blunt rock-adjacent tracks like Parade and Civilization and Canon that maybe read to those critics as a watering down of the sound that came before (also now that I think on it, the synth/guitar riffs on Canon even sound pretty dang similar to Brainwasher, lol). obviously not to say it's a perfect one-to-one parallel, HAA stuck to pretty familiar territory for Daft Punk while AVD saw Justice taking more chances and trying new things they hadn't done before, and HAA hasn't seen the big reappraisal from fans that AVD has, Justice's core fanbase rallies around AVD's strengths way way way more than Daft Punk's fans rally around Human After All in my experience, but you get the idea.

one thing that I did glean from your analysis though was that there's closer parallels between Hyperdrama and Random Access Memories than came to mind as I was working on my own review, not just through the way they use so many big-name collaborators and their focus on much smoother sounds as you highlighted here, but one of my first thoughts when I heard Hyperdrama (and even before I heard it in full, having only heard the singles) was "this is probably going to win a Grammy". what with how much that institution loves backwards-looking projects honoring sounds of the past as well as artists who've proven to have a lot of commercial success or at least have a lot of connections within the music industry (very often giving the electronic award to throwback disco projects and/or pop singers like Madonna or La Roux), Hyperdrama read to me as the kind of project extremely likely to appeal to that particular awards committee, not unlike how RAM did when it came out. of course, it was surprisingly easy for me to forget that RAM won as many Grammys as it did since that was one of the rare times that the Grammys' taste aligned with both the general public and the critics, that's an album that pretty much everyone agreed was great at the time and still mostly do now, and the times that the Grammys "get it right" tend not to stick in people's minds nearly as much as when they award something really out of leftfield like Jon Batiste or whatever lol (or if you want the Jon Batiste equivalent for the electronic award, Black Coffee)

so there, if you wanted the two cents I would've added to this that's about what I would've said. really nice analysis you've provided anyways, interesting to get the perspective of someone who has a lot more exposure and experience with French culture and history and whatnot, that definitely provided some extra insights I never would've thought of myself. oh yeah, and if you like yourself some French Touch/electronic in that vein, there's a pretty great overlooked album I've come across that just recently came out called "Big Bang Puzzle" by Nit, you might want to check that out at some point if you really liked this album, the sound of it isn't too far away although it definitely takes itself a lot less seriously