When French electronic music duo Justice released D.A.N.C.E., the second single from their debut album Cross, in 2007, it sounded like nothing else on the radio. It went on to become a worldwide hit, and now the band (Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay) are celebrating the 15-year anniversary of their first LP by re-releasing the song in its original demo form.
This is included as part of the Extended D.A.N.C.E. EP, which features every version and remix of the track. The Cross album was released on 11 June 2007.
Speaking to Future Music about the making of D.A.N.C.E. back in 2007, Gaspard Augé explained: "Well, it took a long time. It was a very ambitious project for us because we had to write the lyrics in English and find the singers. We used a children's choir in London and recorded it at Strongroom Studios.
"There was only two hours of rehearsals for the children before the recording. We purposely wanted something really fresh and naïve, so that's one reason we used the children's choir.
“We took the recordings back to Paris and edited every word to make it fit exactly how we wanted it."
These vocal recordings, it turns out, were captured after the rest of the track had been put together, which explains why they're not on the demo: "We did the music first and then we wrote the lyrics,” Augé told FM. “It's meant to be a tribute to Michael Jackson, so we thought it would be funny to have children singing the lyrics to the track and of course the 'Easy as ABC' references.
"We composed everything, replaced individual parts, de-tuned them and so on. The strings, for example, are chords we played and then replaced the MIDI with individual string samples. That's how the chord stabs ended up on the new single."
The D.A.N.C.E. Extended EP is available now via Ed Banger Records/Because Music. As well as the demo, it also features the original track, radio and extended edits, and remixes from the likes of Stuart Price and Alan Braxe/Fred Falke.
