Justice stops by the KROQ studios to talk with Kevin Ryder.
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00:00All right, so Justice just walked in.
00:02Hello Kevin, how are you?
00:04Hello.
00:05I'm excited to have you guys here, I love you.
00:07Yeah, thank you, we love you too.
00:08We just met, but...
00:10Xavier and Gaspard are here in the studio.
00:13This is a surprise, I love it so much.
00:16Tell me about your year, how have you been doing?
00:19We were walking down the street, and we saw the K-Rock building,
00:22and we were like, hey, let's make a surprise to Kevin.
00:24Let's make a happy birthday, by the way.
00:29It's really nice that you guys stopped by.
00:31I saw you in Coachella mid-2000s, was it?
00:36Oh wow.
00:362007, yeah.
00:387 was the first time, and 8 was the second time.
00:41Loved it.
00:42Loved it from the very beginning.
00:44What kind of response do you guys get from huge arenas like that,
00:49where people may not be familiar with you yet?
00:53It's great, and it's a bit like playing in a festival,
00:56is a bit of a fight,
00:58in the sense that we are very aware that a lot of attending people don't know us,
01:05like that was the case in 2007.
01:07Right.
01:08In 2008, maybe they knew one song, or two songs, but they didn't know who made it,
01:14and it's still the case today, you know, like when we play a festival now,
01:17we know that a huge part of the audience is not familiar with us.
01:20When you played last year, they knew.
01:23A small part knows, and then some of them are here because they're waiting for the next act,
01:29some of them are just passing by,
01:31and we know that we need to do everything that's in our power to keep them in,
01:37and that's the big part of the work on the live show for us.
01:42Now, you took seven years between albums.
01:45Yes.
01:46Does that have something to do with the pandemic?
01:48Was that added to it, or no?
01:50No.
01:51You were going to do that anyway.
01:52Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:53We were a bit slow at making things,
01:55and at some point, we always know that we're too late to be late,
02:02so that we might as well take our time and really make things the way we want them to be.
02:07And you don't have any fear that the music scene is going to pass you by, sort of?
02:13Oh, we know that everything is going to change around us,
02:18but we're trying to make something as faithful to what we feel,
02:24and sometimes it catches the air of the era,
02:31and sometimes it doesn't, but it's fine.
02:33Yeah, it's not a fear, it's the reality, like music scenes are changing.
02:37Right.
02:38Some of them are passing us by, and that's completely normal.
02:41Like, we enter the process knowing that we're going to be in a completely new territory.
02:46How do you know that hyperdrama is done and ready to go?
02:50We feel it. It's really like a gut feeling.
02:53We know that when something is not completely done,
03:00we just feel that it doesn't make us feel like it should do.
03:03Right.
03:03So we keep on working until we both know.
03:07How did you guys get together with Tame Impala?
03:09We're going to play your song.
03:11The guys from Justice just walked into the studio.
03:13We're going to play the song Never Ender with Tame Impala.
03:16How did you get together with them?
03:17Well, we've been listening to Tame Impala from the very, very beginning,
03:23because when we were in Australia, we used to hang out with the modular people.
03:26That was his label.
03:29But we liked it first, but we really fell in love just before the release of Lonerism,
03:37when we received Elephant, that was the single Zero, I think.
03:42Yep.
03:42And they asked us to make a remix.
03:44And we really got shocked by the track, because for us it was perfect.
03:50And we told them we would only make it worse by remixing it, but congrats.
03:55Really? You said, no thanks, it's good.
03:57Yeah, it was too good.
03:58Like, we would have made it less good.
04:00And then we, it's also the moment, I think, where, like, the whole world realized that it was going to become, like, a huge deal.
04:10Right.
04:10Which it became.
04:11And then, as the years passed by, we noticed, also, by him, like, evolving, that we shared a lot of things in common.
04:22And then, although, like, his music and ours is very different, we can feel that it could make something natural, and we're waiting for the good moment.
04:32And finally, when we started writing Neverender, we thought, okay, like, this feels Kevin-ish, we should get in touch with him.
04:39It's all just a gut feel of how the track hits you.
04:45Yeah, exactly.
04:45Did you guys start out intentionally using as much rock guitar as you do?
04:51Because you're sort of a mixture of disco and rock.
04:55Well, to this day, like, rock and roll is, like, still, like, the main music I'm listening to.
05:02And Gaspard listens to rock already.
05:05And it's also, like, when we grew up, it was also one of the main things we were listening, like, really rock and funk and disco.
05:13So, it was only natural for us to re-inject that into the music we're making, yeah.
05:18Were you happy that other bands didn't seem to be doing that?
05:23Like, you sort of, you were able to put in rock guitars where you didn't have a lot of other bands that were doing that at the time.
05:30Well, I think it was, like, already a bit old news because there was, like, an LCD sound system already existed.
05:38There was a whole scene about that.
05:40But I think we made it in a different way because we don't have exactly the same influences.
05:45And also, our first album didn't have one single guitar at all.
05:50But it was more in the way we would use synths and treat them to give them some sort of the same energy as bands that we love,
06:01such as the White Stripes, for example.
06:02Things that were more, like, maybe abrasive and dirty.
06:10And we loved, like, the sound of the White Stripes because there's an energy that is really nowhere else.
06:19It's a raw energy that Jack White has.
06:21Or garage rock, in general, is something that we love.
06:24We like rock when it's a bit not too well recorded.
06:29Yes, agreed. Understand.
06:31So, how many people come to you now and ask you to remix songs?
06:36Is it everyone?
06:38A bit not everyone.
06:39But we haven't done remixes, like, for a long time or maybe more than 10 years.
06:47So, it still happens.
06:48But we, yeah, we don't do that anymore.
06:50You worked with The Weeknd.
06:51Was that recent?
06:52Yes, yes.
06:52Yeah, yeah.
06:53He asked you or how did that come about?
06:55Yeah, he got in touch.
06:56Like, we were still working on Hyperdrama when he got in touch.
07:01It happened very simply.
07:03He just gave us a call.
07:04No idea how we got our numbers, though.
07:07And, yeah, he said, listen, guys, I have an idea.
07:11I want to make, like, some sort of introduction song with, like, classical music elements.
07:17You know, it was something very, like, eyes wide shut, you know, like, in some sort of, like, masked ballroom, you know.
07:25And we loved the idea, so we started working on that, and then it transformed into the song that it is now.
07:33Well, we're going to play.
07:34I want to thank you guys for stopping by.
07:36I know you're in a rush to get other places, but thank you for stopping by, Gaspard and Xavier.
07:40We're going to play your song, Never Ender, with Tame Impala, which you won a Grammy for?
07:47Exactly.
07:48Okay, good.
07:48I hope that wasn't.
07:49Well informed.
07:50I hope that wasn't false.
07:51I just did want to make sure and not make a mistake.
07:54But thank you for stopping by.
07:55We really appreciate it.
07:56Thanks for having us.
07:56Thanks a lot.
07:57Thank you, guys.
07:57Thanks a lot.