Thibaut Berland aka Breakbot cracked open the night with a smooth, funky mix of house and disco. The French DJ/producer has remixed Justice’s “Let There Be Light” and shares space with the megastars on Ed Banger Records. The crowd was eager to get their dance on for him, and didn’t hesitate for a second when the speakers leaked their very first peep of the night; peeps that bloomed into bass-y growls, soulful croons, compressed piano melodies, and ambient background sounds like ocean waves and crickets. Despite Berland's lack of expression, through his music he splashed smiles onto every young face in the room. And young faces, oh did they abound! Strangely, there were far more boys than girls (about a 7 to 1 ratio, I averaged). Around 8pm the room was only half-full and mostly high/drunk on anticipation. Behind me was a very serene young man doing “liquid” (a type of fluid hand/arm dancing that turns up at most electronic shows… though I’d die to see it at a punk show) while his friends jumped for joy around him. In front of me was a group of adorable college students who had driven up from Eugene, one of which claimed to be the Oregon Ducks' mascot. An Xavier de Rosnay (1/2 of Justice) lookalike to my left nodded in cool approval at the goings-on (Shh! Don’t wake him!). He barely moved under his Ray-Ban's and black leather jacket, but dwarfing this one-man oasis of cool was a vast landscape of youth ready to lose it. This unabashed excitement for an early Tuesday night opening act floored me. I think if Justice came on stage and started playing "Twinkle Little Star" on the flute, these kids would still be gobbling up drugs and dancing their bums off till sunrise.
After an hour or so of sprinkling us with magical disco crystals, Monsieur Breakbot shoved his shaggy brown hair behind his ears (Oh! Finally! Reveal the visage of mystery!), looked up from his decks for the first time, and offered a coy smile. I liked him. He was the antithesis of his own music. Shy, calm, dashing, and bit melancholy, like the strange, lovable protagonists in Wes Anderson films. This guy was anti-hype.
A no-big-deal exit from Breakbot and a short interim between sets situated us in the proper late-night hour of... 9pm. The stage hands pulled a black sheet off of Justice’s control board/sound board/spaceship monstrosity (refer to photos), revealing a giant glowing Jesus cross at its center, symbolizing, amongst other things, a marked shift from cool to bombastic. The "control center" was as long as four standard side-by-side kitchen ovens and about as tall as the average refrigerator. The monolithic appliance floated above us in near-darkness as it hummed Star Spangled Banner for Xavier and Gaspard to strut into like bride and groom walking down the aisle of soundboard-station matrimony. Not too unlike the scene in their "A Cross The World" documentary when Gaspard marries (whom we can logically assume to be) a prostitute in Las Vegas. Heads down they locked into position before myriad buttons, keys, and knobs, and for the remainder of the evening looked like two tiny gyrating candles in a massive, black wedding cake. The all-hail America anthem cut out and the bass dropped in, progressing in fits and starts to their 2011 single "Civilization." For the next hour and a half they frustratingly built things up, quieted them down, built them back up again, climaxed, then repeated the process. The crowd went from smelling like laundry detergent and designer perfume to sweat and miasmatic exhales within minutes, though I’m not sure how they were building up such a pulse with all the fake-outs Justice was pulling. Even “D.A.N.C.E.” was mixed to feel more like a journey than a destination, but I agree that a song with so much recognition from MTV, The Grammys, NRJ, and Victoires de la Musique, should be remixed (and for live shows especially). Each track featured a tremendously inconsistent beat, holding for twenty seconds or so before dropping away again and descending into near silence. But the crowd was so resigned to bliss that it didn't seem to matter, and in the end it's necessary for well-established musicians to throw us some curves.
Around 10 o'clock Justice dropped the last of the hits with "We Are Your Friends," to which everyone sang and gestured along. It's a lovely sight, though, ironically, Justice don't seem terribly friendly (refer to "A Cross the World" documentary or a brief encounter post-show and decide for yourself). A generous encore performance of "Phantom Pt. 2" followed by stage-front hi-fives wrapped things up nicely and everyone left feeling elated, or at least satisfied, that is, except for the rowdy kids who were served a different kind of justice by being escorted out by security.
