On the scale of normal to rock star, being stuck in motion leans hard toward the mundane. And yet, on a humid March afternoon in Texas, here I find Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — the French electronic music legends better known as Justice.
Augé (44, bearded, tall, taciturn) is in the back seat of an air-conditioned Uber, texting. De Rosnay (41, clean-shaven, shorter, talkative) sits next to him, playing the trivia game on the tablet hanging from the back of the passenger seat, tapping out answers with long, thin fingers as the SUV drifts through the streets of Austin , dead end between South to Southwest. (He gets most of them right — but asks for help when asked to identify New York state from its shape.) The couple arrived here yesterday from Paris, and de Rosnay's luggage hasn't turned up yet. Last night he went on his first run to Target, to stock up on fresh underwear.
It's a cliché to assume that famous musicians exist in a fantasy bubble of perpetual ease, but you'd be forgiven for being a little confused by the idea of one half of the revered duo buying a pack of Hanes at the till. Still, de Rosnay and his Justice Augé partner look the part: the latter in a brown suit, a vintage '80s T-shirt and a large gold metal belt buckle that forms the words 'Beach Boys', de Rosnay in dirty white chucks, skinny black jeans and a black leather jacket with fake pearls. Streaks of silver run through his otherwise black hair and the diamond stud in his left ear looks real. Both indoors and after dark, they keep their sunglasses on.
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