#15: Daft Punk - Discovery (2001)

1. One More Time
2. Aerodynamic
3. Digital Love
4. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
5. Crescendolls
6. Nightvision
7. Superheroes
8. High Life
9. Something About Us
10. Voyager
11. Veridis Quo
12. Short Circuit
13. Face To Face
14. Too Long

(As promised, back from hiatus - and with uni drawing to a close, hopefully I shouldn't have to take another one for a good while.)

I figured that if I was going to waste all my dance-related adjectives on one album, it might as well be one by French House pioneers Daft Punk. You could argue that I should've done my Homework first, but this blog is all about Discovery...

Ok, that was terrible.

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Daft Punk are the kind of band (for lack of a better term) who have had a huge influence on their respective genre: It's one that can still be felt today, most pointedly if you look at a certain other French duo of recent times. Homework set the ball rolling in the mid-90's with the likes of 'Da Funk' and 'Around The World', but Discovery is probably the record that contains their most easily recognisable anthems.

In fact, at first glance, the album might seem incredibly front-loaded, with its singles lined up neatly in chronological order as the first four tracks. But then again, if you're going to create an album with the intention of making people dance, you want them to get moving right from the start, no? The hands in the air, feel-good vibe of 'One More Time' is palpable from the very first second, although the duo pull the trick of keeping the first 30 seconds or so a little muted, almost recreating that moment where you're walking up to the door of a party in full swing, the sound of the music straining to escape through the walls. Then you open the door and BAM, it's on like Donkey Kong - "Don't stop the dancing".

'Aerodynamic' keeps things moving with a funky synth loop before whacking out the kind of earnestly excessive guitar solo that demands furious air guitaring. Suddenly, a bell tolls, and then the opening loop repeats - except this time it sounds like it's being played on a synth that's slowly sinking to the bottom of a lake. 'Digital Love', on the other hand, appears to be the result of the world's most endearingly naïve android creating the perfect soundtrack to the tentative advances of coy teenagers. Finally, the robo-powered electro-house-funk of 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' rounds out the record's opening salvo in a fit of warped vocals and jerky danceability.

Thankfully, the band's creativity extends beyond their most obvious hits: The cheerleader shouts and handclaps of 'Crescendolls' sound like someone laying the foundations for The Go! Team, while 'Nightvision' proves that there's more than banging house anthems to the band, with a sub-two minute swathe of soothing ambience and occasionally ominous minor-key tones.

'Superheroes' thumps it's way into existence with a pounding drumbeat and looped vocals before arpeggiated synths skitter across the foreground, and follow up 'High Life' doesn't stray too far from this formula either. 'Something About Us', however, is a different beast entirely: The simple sentiment of 'Digital Love' returns, but this time it's set to a laid-back lounge beat that provides the record with a moment that's both a little bit romantic and also oddly chilled out.

It's only a brief break from the dancing though, as 'Voyager' begins with a space-age synth before the thumping drums return along with an understated yet incessantly funky bassline, with an electric harp-like sound gliding effortlessly over its closing stages. They then see fit to try another experiment for a couple of tracks. 'Veridis Quo' starts out sounding like something from a Final Fantasy soundtrack, and this opening riff continues throughout the song as the main character wanders into a club, then out onto the balcony to stare at the stars for a while - there's even a bit where the reedy synth riff drops out long enough for some tasty plot exposition to be revealed. Moving on to a different genre of game entirely, the glitchy, in-your-face electro of 'Short Circuit' wouldn't sound out of place in a Sonic The Hedgehog level - the song's breakdown even sounds like a Mega Drive's sound chip laboriously malfunctioning.

After briefly considering a career as video game composers, the duo return to their more usual house style on 'Face To Face', with the cut-up vocals of earlier tracks making their return before (gasp), a coherent, untreated vocal appears for the first time on the record, giving the song a touch of electro-pop cheesiness that isn't entirely a bad thing. And while it's tempting to make the obvious joke about 10-minute album closer 'Too Long', it maintains its groove well enough to prove a godsend for lazy DJs who need to nip out for a quick fag or two, leaving the crowd to ironically mock the song's title while still shaking their arses to it - even if it does sound naggingly like UK Garage types Artful Dodger (although saying that, I did like their album...).

The record doesn't really end with any sort of sense of closure, but in this context that's not so important: In my eyes, Daft Punk aren't particularly an 'album' band, although in fairness the record's tracklisting certainly doesn't feel haphazardly thrown together. So yeah, this is the kind of record you can carelessly throw on at a party to make people dance with the minimum of effort, but you're more likely to hear these tracks worked into DJ sets and cropping up on houseparty playlists, where they'll fit in seamlessly with just about anything else you care to play. The album is at its best when it's trying something a little different, but even the more straightforward house tracks do enough to keep you moving. Overall, while Discovery is perfectly listenable as a purely aural experience, it isn't necessarily the sort of album you'll just want to sit down and listen to. Rather, its greatest strength lies in the fact that it's a collection of great songs to make you dance: And that's the point of dance music, right?