Life After †: Some DJs

In 2007, Justice descended into our lives like a humungous, golden, cruciform spacecraft from another world (France). Their album, †, is an extended study in ass-kicking, and should be heard by anyone with an interest in electronic dance music. I have been looking around ever since for other music in a similar vein; thankfully, their popularity also seems to have inspired a slew of new electro house-type DJs, almost all of whom seem to be French. I’ve found that good electronic music of any subgenre — good in the sense of having been interestingly put together, with some complexity, such that it can easily be enjoyed even in non-inebriated, non-club settings — is often very hard to come by, so I report some of my findings below.

• Dilemn: I came across this guy’s EPs quite at random on iTunes and was immediately enamoured of his powerfully buzzing bass and in-your-face four-on-the-floor beats. There’s less of the funkiness and grandness that so endeared me to Justice, but Dilemn can certainly match them for amount of punch packed.

• Golden Bug: His album is a bit less danceable and more electro-y, and I found much of it pretty tepid despite its aspirations toward electro-disco-fun-ness (aspirations for which I have great sympathy). However, a couple of the songs (“Rocket City” and “Back to Death” in particular) develop into something much more wicked, and if you’d like to hear them they’re in one of the music players on the above-linked Myspace page.

• MSTRKRFT‘s sound is rawer than that of Justice or Dilemn. I’ve never found their more staccato synths and less layered-up style quite as compelling as the all-out blasting of the others. I also thought their previous album was marred by a bit too much straightforward repetition—my perennial beef with a lot of dance music. However, as of just now I am listening to their brand-new album, Fist of God, and some of it is actually sounding pretty good to me: more mixed-up. This is my favourite so far. (These guys are actually from Toronto and not France.)

• The Bloody Beetroots: I actually have only listened to a smattering of their songs, and haven’t particularly liked any of them besides this rather kickass number entitled “Butter”. (Ok, and these guys are Italian.)

• I was just introduced to Yuksek and I’m liking him a lot. His debut album came out this year, and while it’s not as much of a constant rush as Justice’s, it’s quite pleasantly loaded with variation and still has a few good hard-hitting dance tracks. As an example of this variation, I give you the lovely, serene track, “I Could Never Be a Dancer,” which is not in the least representative of the rest of the album, but I think we’ve probably had enough boom-chish-boom-chish for one post anyway. (Don’t worry, he’s French.)

And that, I hope, will help to tide us over until Messrs. Augé and de Rosnay see fit to provide us with a new studio album.