Album Review: Escapades by Gaspard Augé

Ever since Justice's epoch-defining 2007 debut + was followed up by Audio, Video, Disco, it has been clear that the French duo were more committed to proggy song structures and live instrumentation than club bangers. Gaspard Augé consolidates this approach with his debut solo record, a dynamic, ostentatious ode to the ’70s with all the kitsch that entails. Escapades opens with a couple of uptempo, episodic tracks: BBC Sport’s Euro 2020 intro music theme Force Majeure with its heroic chord sequence and chugging pedal note bass, then Rocambole with its shortening motifs and fantastically intense crescendo (even after all these years, Augé's music still very much thrives at high volumes).

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If EDM had been created in the 1970s, it might have sounded like Escapades, the debut album from Gaspard Augé, better known as one half of French electronic duo Justice. Like EDM, Escapades is utterly in thrall to scale, an album of colossal gestures; like '70s prog, it shows warm eccentricity and extreme melodic prowess. Escapades is, by some distance, the most ridiculous electronic album released so far this year, a giddy tour de force unrestrained by common sense or conventional tastes.

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Is there any Justice in the world? Not right now! But we do have Gaspard Augé's latest offering 'Escapades' to hold us together for a bit. This will be Augé's first solo project outside his and Xavier de Rosnay's Grammy award-winning double act; with Gaspard himself naming this expedition pour une "an extra-marital adventure after 15 years with the same person". French composer Victor le Masne lent a helping hand in this sugar surge creation, with the project miraculously taking only two months to record.

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