When French electronic duo Justice first introduced the world to their first new album in eight years, it was accompanied by the familiar voice of one of Australia's most popular and influential artists: Tame Impala.
Released in January, One Night/All Night pairs dark, throbbing synths and wriggling basslines with the distinctive falsetto of Tame Impala's Kevin Parker.
It was the lead single for Hyperdrama, Justice's fourth studio effort (and this week's Double J Feature Album), which evokes their earlier work while tapping into contemporary sounds in sleekly produced collaborations.
The Parisian duo — Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — enlisted artists from the worlds of RnB, neo-soul, indie rock and beyond to enrich their record.
Thundercat, Miguel, New Zealand cosmonaut Connan Mockasin and emerging artists RIMON and The Flints all have starring roles, but Hyperdrama's proverbial top billing goes to Kevin Parker, who has not one but two key moments on the album.
Parker (who writes, performs, records and produces all of Tame Impala's music solo) features on One Night/All Night, Hyperdrama's lead single, and Neverender, its opening track.
It's a full circle moment, especially considering Parker was too shy to introduce himself when Tame Impala and Justice shared billing for 2012's now-defunct Parklife festival.
"Back in those days I either had crippling social anxiety or I was wasted, which basically meant I never got to have normal conversations with people," Parker admitted to triple j's Lucy Smith in a roundtable interview alongside Augé and de Rosnay
"I remember going, 'Holy f**k, it's Justice!'… I was on a whole festival with Justice and never got to meet them properly."
"So, it was kind of a relief to finally get the opportunity to get to know them properly and then work on stuff together."
In attitude and tone, Hyperdrama most closely evokes Justice's 2007 debut album, Cross, which instantly cemented them as not only worthy contemporaries to Daft Punk but challengers to their dance music throne.
That comparison was underscored by Daft Punk's manager, Pedro Winter, signing them to his influential 'French touch' label' Ed Banger Records.
Justice's sweaty, supersized take on electronic music — fusing colossal beats, filthy synths and massive melodic hooks with the DNA of arena rock and 80s RnB — was a huge hit with a younger generation of musicians, Kevin Parker included.
"I remember when it was when I first heard Justice," he said.
"It definitely had an impact on me."
In fact, back in 2012, the Fremantle-bred musician put in a request for Justice to remix Tame Impala's breakout single Elephant (which The Wiggles famously took to the top of triple j's Hottest 100 of 2021).
However, Justice rejected the offer on the grounds the song was already "perfect" to their ears.
"We couldn't do anything to it!" the duo recently told Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
"We were, not jealous, but like 'Wow, this is so good'."
A long-awaited partnership
Having been admirers for over a decade, Justice finally reached out to Parker in late 2020 and later linked up in Los Angeles multiple times over several months.
"[We first] sat down to just talk about music and listen to the very early demos we brought," explained de Rosnay.
"We thought Kevin's voice would be a natural match to our music."
They initially had Neverender in mind for Parker but presented it among several other ideas.
"We wanted something as natural as possible to happen, if there's one that catches [his] ear, let's do it," de Rosnay said.
However, Parker didn't immediately gravitate toward the proposed song.
"I [thought] 'Oh yeah, it's the one that makes the most sense for me to sing on, so let's not do that one'," he chuckled.
Parker is no stranger to collaboration.
Despite famously working alone in the studio as Tame Impala, committing the cosmic sounds and deeply personal anxieties in his head onto tape, following the success of 2015 album Currents, he's worked with an increasingly impressive list of A-listers.
Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Gorillaz, Kanye West and Travis Scott are just a sampling of those who've employed his services.
He's also a key influence and co-producer on Dua Lipa's anticipated new album Radical Optimism.
But for his long-awaited link-up with Justice, he initially wanted to play against type.
"Maybe what I was thinking was Justice music is always so in your face. I think I was eager to get my hard Justice fix."
Despite his initial reluctance, it didn't take much convincing from Justice that Neverender was the right choice.
"I always loved it. I instantly got this futuristic Earth, Wind & Fire vibe from it. That's everything that I love," Parker said.
Accompanied by a luxurious backing — a stuttering disco strut of crisp beats and fuzzy keys, all washed in the psychedelic cadence Tame Impala are famous for — Parker delivers a yearning falsetto.
"I think Neverender has the highest notes that I've sung in a song ever."
"As far as notes in a series, not just the odd high one, the whole thing is right up there," he calculated.
In fact, the part was demanding enough that Parker had to change up his methods on the fly while recording with the French duo at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles.
"It's super professional, all the pop stars go there. We had the super expensive microphone set up, me standing in the popstar vocal booth," he explained.
"The vocals were so challenging for me, I was like, 'I need to couch this one, guys' … I'm just going to come in [to the control room] because I need to sit on the couch and bend over, extend my neck or something."
That's exactly what they did.
"As soon as the professional environment was broken… the vocals started sounding magic," de Rosnay said. Only a few takes later, and they had nailed the track.
The other collab began with a techno fever dream
Xavier de Rosnay said the seeds for One Night/All Night were planted when he was struck down with COVID-19 and soaking up hardcore electronica from the 90s.
"I remember it was Christmas 2020 [and] I was all feverish. I had a 40-degree temperature and just zoning out at home, listening to Thunderdome compilations," he said.
"They're like 90s Dutch warehouse, gabber, and hardstyle compilation [CDs] with evil clowns and bats on the covers."
The experience inspired de Rosnay and Augé to experiment with pitching down the hi-octane beats per minute of "hardcore, hardstyle, gabber music to give it some sort of melancholy and different groove... Make it a more fun, disco version of that."
One Night/All Night began as one such experiment, a nocturnal thud that was "in the realm of horror to some extent," Augé described, but put the focus on a single, dead simple riff.
He likened the process to The White Stripes' iconic Seven Nation Army.
"Jack White had the genius of finding something super simple and make a whole song out of it … but if we happen to find a riff [like that] would we keep it?"
During a break working with Parker on Neverender, Justice played him a demo of One Night/All Night.
"And you said, 'Oh yeah, maybe I have something for it'."
Parker remembered being struck by the track's "weird, manic, dark, haunted energy.
"Everything I sing, usually has this — I don't know — melancholy, dreamy emotive kind of thing. But when you put it over these super-dark chords, it makes something interesting," he said.
Parker sings seductively atop the track's gritty, chromatic thump: "And I could be your woman/'Cause if that's the only answer/Then we could be together."
"That added a whole new dimension," de Rosnay remarked.
"It became a strange, sad disco tune… It added something we'd never thought of when we first made the track.
"That was another high five moment… two high-five moments, which was amazing."
Hyperdrama is out now.
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