It's been a long time since the Prodigy's Liam Howlett took the sound of a glass bottle shattering and used it as part of one of his percussion tracks, since house music aimed for a certain frantic, bleary-eyed abandon. Over the past decade and a half, house has grown increasingly pretty and genteel, more concerned with space and melody than furious fucked-up drive. Michael Mayer and Dominik Eulberg and Ricardo Villalobos make a lot of pretty noises, but not all of us have the attention span to absorb their slowly unfolding shimmers; it's too much Terry Riley, not enough Teddy Riley.
For those of us who never got sick of the pitched-up hedonism of hardcore rave, "Waters of Nazareth" is exactly what we've been missing. The first single from Justice, a pair of French remixers affiliated with the fashionably coked-up Paris label Ed Banger, "Waters of Nazareth" is the sort of hammering destructo-blast that we thought Europeans had forgotten how to make. The track starts with a distorted, flanged-out synth riff and a stomping house beat that sounds like it's being pounded on upside-down oil-drums. The base elements are noisy and fucked, but the track's construction is classic house, and it would sound pretty and florid if they'd played the riff on pianos instead of dying synths. "Waters of Nazareth" moves with a sort of desperate, claustrophobic lurch-- there's no empty space anywhere-- but it still builds and unfolds on its own schedule. Halfway through, a mournful organ sighs into the track and gives it a melancholy lift, but the rip-snorting heaviness is what'll stick with you.
"Waters of Nazareth" sounds like the sort of burning megaton volley you might build a movement from, but Justice can't even keep its momentum through this six-song record, and that's a problem. The EP only has two other originals, and neither shares the title track's bruising force. "Let There Be Light (Demo)" is a lesser sequel: same unrelenting drums and squeaky, ugly synth noises with none of the slamming immediacy. And "Carpates" is a deeply unpleasant IDM misstep with an annoying repetitive bass bounce and a clicky, sidelong drum track. Both feel weirdly undercooked, like the duo just couldn't manage another furious dance banger and instead ground out a couple tracks to pad the release.
The second half of the EP is all remixes: two of "Waters of Nazareth", one of "Let There Be Light". The Justice remix of "Waters of Nazareth" is a mess; they tweak the drums and chop up the synth riff just enough to take all the propulsive power away from both. And Erol Alkan's re-edit is pretty much just the original track with a stretched-out, delayed-gratification intro. It's DJ Funk's remix of "Let There Be Light" that saves the EP's back half, mostly because he throws away the original track, replacing it with a great clipped ghetto-tech bass riff and a chopped-up "bounce that ass" chant, leading to controlled Miami bass insanity. Let's hope Justice is taking notes.
