Daft Punk - Discovery

[the Jazz]

So I saw the little flash video (Work It) with their song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" a few years ago and liked it muchly, and finally got around to getting their album. Some of the tracks get kind of irritating with the repetition, but the tracks that I like are awesome. And even the ones that I don't like as much, have some little piece of something, some technique or some groove that is fascinating to me. I can't manage to find much information on them, though. I would love to know how they put together their songs, how much is samples, which beats are homemade and how they made them, and how much if any is actually played in. I believe one of them plays keyboard... I don't know if the other plays guitar? Or anything?

Anyhow. Cool beans. It's really hard to find stuff on them online (at least, it's been tricky this past hour or so), but I did find a transcript from some web chat they did. I thought the response to this question was particularly interesting:

Clare Elliot: 'Digital Love' and 'Something about Us'. Who did you dream about and who was the secret about? Was it the same person?

Thomas: There are many secrets in 'Discovery', and they are not to be revealed yet! Art and music are not, in our opinion, about logical things and explanation; rather just feelings. It raises questions, rather than explains. It's like a good movie, when there are areas of darkness or mystery. That's how it's intended. Art is not information - it's not like the news. So it's just there to feel - to feel good, or sad - but it doesn't need to be understood or explained.

I so totally agree. The full transcript, for those who are interested:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chat/dance/daftpunk.shtml

[HeuristicsInc]

this reminds me, i wanted to check them out more after hearing of that flash video, oddly enough via the "miles fox documentary" thread from a while back. thanks!
-bill

[mkilly]

I'm pretty surprised that the Jazz of all people would dig on this. I'm pretty late to the game but it's great, as are their other albums (the most recent one mostly excepted). Phoenix's two albums, especially United, are well-recommended, too, as well as everything by Air.

[Tonamel]

Well, "Human after all" is definitely very different from the previous two releases, but I still really like it (for the most part. Robot Rock is kind of a low point).

But the Around the World music video is clearly one of the best things ever.

[Calfborg]

I thought Human After All was by far the worst thing Daft Punk have done. It just sounds like there was minimal effort involved, plus the fact that the album was made in 6 weeks or so. For example, "Make Love" is good if you enjoy listening to a loop for 5 minutes with no variation or development. Actually, you could apply that to just about every track on the album, with the exception of "On/Off", a 19 second shit track on the 10-track album. Oh, yeah, vocode everything, too. I would recommend not listening to it. Discovery is a great album, and my favorite of theirs. There's much more variety than on Homework, but that album is good regardless.

[mkilly]

I listened to it and thought "Robot Rock" was the best, in fact.