Discovery - Daft Punk > Reviews > This Is Just Silly

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it rate alongside the competition	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	An astonishingly diverse album, expanding their genre in fascinating new ways .
Disadvantages:	Releasing "One More Time" as the first single has made their audience a little cynical .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

In 1997 Daft Punk (Frenchmen Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) released their debut album “Homework”, which has since been recognised as one of the finest dance music albums ever written. It ranks alongside Leftfield’s “Leftism” (1995) and Massive Attack’s “Blue Lines” (1991) as one of the very greatest albums focused on electronic sounds. As the two artists above have shown, writing a follow-up to a highly successful album is extremely difficult. Leftfield waited until 1999 before releasing “Rhythm And Stealth” and it has taken a similar length of time for Daft Punk to write their second album “Discovery”.

“Discovery” doesn’t just have to contend with matching the extremely high expectations generated after ‘Homework’, but it also has to address the development of the sub-genre effectively created by Daft Punk in their 1997 album The characteristic filtered vocals, deep bass and scratches of their recognisably French sound has progressed little since its’ creation four years ago.

Since then we’ve had Stardust’s delightful “Music Sounds Better With You”, but that was written by Thomas Bangalter anyway. Modjo’s 2000 hit “Lady (Hear Me Tonight)” was a good tune but brought nothing new to the now three year-old genre. Aside from this, Cher (“Believe”) and Madonna (“Music”) churned out bland pop versions of the new French sound, which basically ensured that the population at large was wholly sick of the vocoder effects pioneered by Daft Punk in the first place. Their genre, their niche in dance music, has been left stagnant and in need of revitalisation.

“Discovery” is precisely the album to do just that. Admittedly the early signs were not too encouraging. The first single from the new album, “Daft Punk One More Time” (with vocals by Romanthony) was, to the disappointment of many (and myself included), nothing new. It was the same sound that had been knocking around since “Homework”. Granted, the slick Daft Punk production had crafted it into an almost effortlessly perfect structure, with two near-identical halves split by an absolutely huge break, but it still offered little new over such “Homework” era classics as “Around The World” and “Revolution 909”.

Within the context of the album, though, “One More Time” takes on a completely different meaning. No longer ‘just another filter house track’, it instead stands as a lone reference point to the earlier simplicity of Daft Punk’s music, while the rest of the album moves into fascinating new places, rich in musical texture, countless influences and inspirations, and a dozen new perspectives on the original Daft Punk sound. “Discovery” is not as good as “Homework”. It eclipses it in every possible way.

“One More Time” opens the album but before its gentle concluding fade is complete the introduction to “Aerodynamic” cuts in delivering a sharp bolt to the consciousness – a sample of Big Ben. This is tipped to be the second single, and it begins with bell from a clock tower before sliding into smooth house grooves and funky guitar hooks. What comes next? A wailing electric guitar solo, which is then wrapped around the main beat again. The phenomenal diversity of samples and sounds within this one track alone is astonishing, but the fact that it is gelled together so impeccably is extremely impressive.

The third track, “Digital Love” (another potential single) reveals another key influence that recurs throughout “Discovery” – ‘80s style electronic disco. This sound has had something of a renaissance of late, especially at the hands of Jacques Lu Cont releasing entire albums of deeply ‘80s influenced, yet very modern music under the name Les Rythmes Digitales. “Digital Love” is a less intense track than the two preceding it, with pleasant, catchy lyrics. It gets a neat filter treatment halfway through before slipping into a break combining some more of the brilliant guitar samples of “Aerodynamic” and even the vocals of Bangalter and Guy-Man.

“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is one of the most outstanding tracks on an album of very high quality anyway. It impresses as much by design as by execution. The lyric inlay sheet shows four columns of four short phrases which are repeated in the track with gradually increasing frequency before boiling over into a tremendous cacophony of distorted samples, electronic effects and a spot-on house track which underpins the whole thing perfectly.

A stretch of largely instrumental tracks follows. “Crescendolls” is probably about as close as Daft Punk come to progressive house, swaying in and out of a huge house groove with odd samples that are typical of Daft Punk, and a quick central break built around a few neat scratches. The short “Nightvision” calms the album’s tempo down further, flicking between soft, smooth synthetic strings. “Superheroes”, on the other hand, begins with a military snare drum which leads into a fast 4-4 beat and a very “Homework”-esque vocal sample. The intensity of it is gradually tempered by more electronic strings and some atmospheric electronic riffs, but the pace remains.

Track eight, “Highlife” is the only song other than “One More Time” that bears comparison with “Homework”. Similar by design, certainly, but there are some great ‘80s-esque organ samples in here too which by now are recognisably “Discovery”. The next track “Something About Us” is wonderfully mellow affair, very down-tempo with, like “Digital Love”, quite lovely, simple and unpretentious lyrics. Skipping ahead briefly, track eleven “Verdi Quo” shares the same cool ambience but is deeper and without lyrics.

“Voyager”, track ten, is also instrumental, but with a brighter beat than “Verdi Quo”. The twelfth track “Short Circuit” lays the ‘80s influences on thick with a deep, fleshy bassline and characteristically ‘80s synths laid on a pretty much functional Daft Punk beat as the main rhythm develops into some fascinating twists and highly imaginative sequences which decays and degenerates into conclusion.

Two vocal tracks conclude* the album. The thirteenth is “Face To Face” with vocals provided by Todd Edwards, like a more upbeat “Digital Love” without the distorted vocal effects. The concluding track “Too long”, which sees the return of Romanthony’s vocals, stretches out to ten minutes making it around twice the length of any other track on the album. It has an a cappella feel to start with as the music is very minimal in the beginning. Gradually it develops into a full-blown house affair, perhaps the only track on the album aside from “One More Time” with obvious club crossover potential.

This is partly why “Discovery” differs so much from “Homework”, and what to my mind marks it out as a major improvement: the heavy use of deep 4-4 beats in “Homework” is largely reduced here, making the album less accessible from a club point of view but far superior in terms of inspiring originality and creativity, which this album has by the ton.

And it’s not just original in terms of actual music content either. Each copy of “Discovery” contains a ‘Daft Card’ which allows users to go to the Daft Punk website ‘Daft Club’ and download bonus unreleased tracks for free. It requires you to download two pieces of software: the InterTrust IRP, which is just under 7Mb (30min download on a 28.8k connection, apparently) and the DaftPlayer itself, which is just under 2Mb. At the time of writing there’s only one new track available called “Ouverture”, a deep, instrumental track opening with a sample of a modem and expanding into a rubbery bassline with echoing vocal clips. ‘Daft Club’ is a clever system obviously designed to encourage album sales over use of Napster and other MP3 file-sharing systems.

“Discovery” is groundbreaking in more ways than one. Daft Punk have expanded their unique sound to a new breadth and depth, putting them quite simply a class above their rivals. No other contemporary dance act has achieved such a quantum leap in album quality between their first and second releases. Their commitment to producing dance music with greater depth and sophistication shines through in this brilliant album. The first candidate for best album of 2001, and one which will be difficult to beat.