French electronic duo Justice will be performing at The Met on Wednesday, bringing a stage set designed for festivals crammed into the theater for an intense light show.
The Grammy award-winning group dropped their first album in nearly a decade, Hyperdrama, back in April, featuring contributions from Tame Impala, Miguel, and Thundercat. One half of the duo, Xavier de Rosnay, said the main goal while making the new record was to have fun and “make something we like.”
“It’s a necessary step to make something that sounds kind of new to us just to get excited and just to feel that we are not like redoing the same thing,” de Rosnay said. “So really, the only goal is to make something that we think is fresh and fun.”
Justice exploded on the scene with their debut record † (Cross) back in 2007, garnering rave reviews while being named one of Pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the 2000s, and having their track “D.A.N.C.E.” named Rolling Stone’s fourth-best song of the year. The success of that record took them to Philadelphia for the first time.
“When doing this first tour, we knew that it was something that would happen only once,” de Rosnay said while discussing his first memories of touring the U.S. “You only do something once for the first time, so like the energy and the discovery of what it was like to do the U.S., it was very special and that’s why we documented it at the time.”
“We’ve never been like looking in the rearview mirror,” de Rosnay said. “It was an amazing time, but we never had nostalgia for this moment. We don’t try to stay young in a sense, whether it’s in like the music we make or the shows we put [on], we think it’s important to just grow up with your age.”
And as the band’s music evolved, so did their stage setup. Gone are the days of leather jackets and Marshall amp stacks. Now, the band is touring with an insane light rig that was showcased during Justice’s two well-received performances at Coachella and Glastonbury following the release of their new album. That same setup will be on full display at The Met.
“To us seeing it like this close in a vacuum, in a venue, that is way smaller, it’s almost like a bonus,” de Rosnay said. “You’re like three times closer. It’s like it looks three times bigger.”
And for those who attend the show Wednesday, de Rosnay hopes they’ll come out with a cherished memory and “a good window out of the real world.”
“That’s the icing on the cake, an aesthetic shock,” de Rosnay said. “Like when you go somewhere, and you see or you hear something or you taste something and you come out just a little bit different? If we can provoke that for a handful of people, we would be the happiest.”
Tickets are on sale. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8. Braxe + Falcon will also be performing.
