Justice talk challenge of recording a live album and hint at new music plans

The French production duo released the ‘live’ remix album ‘Woman Worldwide’ late last month

Justice have spoken about the various challenges which are involved when recording a live album, while also sharing a few early details about their next studio project.

The French duo, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, recently released the record ‘Woman Worldwide’, which contained re-worked versions of tracks from their third LP ‘Woman’ (which was released in 2016) as well as some of their older songs.

The result produced something akin to the kind of set that Justice would perform in a live setting, with ‘Woman Worldwide’ therefore resembling a live album – albeit one recorded entirely in the studio.

Speaking about the challenge of re-working ‘Woman’ in the studio for the project, Augé told NME that it was good to “push our limitations” in order to create the kind of live sound they’ve been trying to achieve on stage.

“It’s nice to push our limitations and hear the proper sound – when we play on stage, we can’t have all our gear and can’t really portray our sounds as best as we would like to do, which doesn’t matter when performing live,” he said. “But [with ‘Woman Worldwide’] we wanted to bring what we envisioned as our perfect sound in a live format, so chose to go back into the studio.

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“For our live shows, it would take about eight months to get everything right – we had to work on stuff like the cinematography and lighting design. Every time we start a new tour we have to find new ways of performing live because the tools we use on previous tours are already obsolete.

“I guess every time we make a new record we have about 10 more songs that we have to distinguish from previous records. It’s always a bit of ‘sonic jigsaw’ since we have to get all parts together and find a way of making things sound as if they were made in the same period of time. Most of the time it’s possible, but sometimes it’s a bit harder.”

Asked about the prospect of a follow-up to ‘Woman’ materialising anytime soon, Augé said that the pair would likely return to the studio following the conclusion of their touring commitments later this year.

“The real direction always starts when it’s just the two of us in the studio, getting our hands dirty,” he hinted. “All the ideas we collect start shifting.”