Did Justice use the software that comes free with every Mac to create one of the most iconic albums of all time? Hop in our time machine.

With news that French duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay AKA Justice will be touching down in Aus in December for a run of shows along the East Coast, we started feeling a little nostalgic, thinking about that game-changing 2007 debut album, affectionately known as CROSS.

That’s not to say that the French duo haven’t been putting out epic albums since – their collab-heavy 2024 banger Hyperdrama is all the evidence you need here – but CROSS was something special. The record invaded clubs around the world at a time when there was this mass migration or cross-pollination from indie sleaze to “disco”, when extravagant fringes, fluros and v-neck tees were the fashion mainstays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWaWsgBbFsA

Synths that sounded like chainsaws, funky basslines, and warbly vocal samples made CROSS feel like this raw expansion on the likes of Daft Punk’s genre-melding Discovery – it was heavier, dirtier and more immediate. There are no two bars on the album that are the same, with Augé and de Rosnay feeding those chemically elevated dancefloors with pure chaos at a higher hook-per-minute ratio than anyone else on the scene at the time.

This was before smartphones hit the mainstream, when MySpace was the only reason to be “online” and the classic word-of-mouth (remember that?) was the most powerful form of communication. Urban myths and rumours would flourish as no one had a computer in their pocket to fact-check whatever bullshit was being spouted at the afters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXokkMPhRrY

Which brings us to the rumour that Justice recorded their debut album on GarageBand…

For those who don’t know, GarageBand is the music recording software on Macs – it’s kinda the Coldplay of music recording software: reliable, easy(ish) to use, probably not making any top 10 lists. But being inbuilt into Macs, it’s allowed millions of people access to software that otherwise would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The idea that your favourite album was being made on the clunky software that you played with when you got your first Mac was pretty alluring, which is probably why this rumour spread.

Using today’s technology (thanks Google) we’ve been able to get some of the facts straight for you. And the answer is YES, Justice recorded CROSS on GarageBand… well, mostly yes…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1dYFGkPUE

Over 2005-06, when the album was being recorded in the basement studio of a rented chapel in Paris, Augé and de Rosnay used the infamous DAW (Digital Audio Workstation – thanks again Google) alongside Cubase SX. “Not for the composing, but the production. It’s amazing. A lot of people think it’s bullshit when we say we use GarageBand, but it’s actually an amazing tool,” de Rosnay said in a 2008 interview with Pitchfork.

While they obviously sampled heavily and demonstrated an elite ability to splice up and re-engineer those samples, it’s wild to think that some of the most iconic tracks in dance music were constructed using synth sounds from a library that features “Alien Language”, “Elixir of Life”, and “Gnarly Trance Pluck”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDsLRQg_g4

But why did they use GarageBand? You’d probably guess money was a factor (and maybe it was), but according to a Mixmag interview from back in the day, they genuinely had an appreciation for how those software-created sounds didn’t sound like the real thing.

“We love the flexibility and the possibilities offered by software. A lot of people say that software is shit because it doesn’t sound like analog-hardware stuff,” they said. “I think the fact that it doesn’t sound like analog gear — but something else entirely — is why we like to use it. And with Cubase SX and GarageBand [on an Apple G5], we mainly used the sound libraries, which are quite amazing.”

So there you have it. Myth busted. That guy who dropped this knowledge while cross-eyed at the afters back in the day was right… wonder where he is now…

Flex this knowledge on your mates as you wander in to the show in December, which will feature Tame Impala (DJ set) and Busy P as supports. Check out the dates below and head here for tickets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQjT7LSBLA