Why do they bother honestly? Could there be any more pointless records than those made by Daft Punk?
A vicious cycle was created in 1997 when Daft Punk released Homewerk; an album, which despite featuring in every top 100 list of the 1990s from the mighty Pitchfork to my humble blog, was and still is utterly pointless.
2001’s Discovery would go on to be more revered, and more beloved, but it too was an exercise in wasting the world’s collective time and money.
Then Daft Punk truly gave the game away with 2005’s Human After All, a record that made no attempt to hide its sheer pointlessness
Okay, so by now you may be quite rightly perplexed, how can records that are held in such high regard be so flippantly derided. Well the answer is simply; Daft Punk don’t make good albums, they just don’t.
We’ve been going through the same process over and over and over again, and yet for some reason, the world seems to have some kind of collective amnesia when it comes to a Daft Punk album release.
So let’s review the process: Daft Punk arrive after an infuriatingly long wait at a seemingly random moment with a new album. By this point an uncontrollable wave of anticipation has developed, and the album disappoints.Homewerk and Discovery were fragmented awkward records, that didn’t flow in the slightest, staggering between moments of remarkable brilliance and uncomfortable irrelevance.
The critics of the day, doing their duty, dole out 3/5 reviews, and the music world seems strangely deflated, and thenit happens. Daft Punk decide to play live and they blow everyone away. Creating mesmeric two hour long mixes, never stopping to soak in applause, never wasting a second, always mixing, merging and layering beats, they force groups of 50,000 people to dance relentlessly, and then they stop, they stop playing and vanish for another five years, starting the cycle a new.
For others the experience is different, they don’t see Daft Punk live, instead they venture out to a club and hear the way “Da Funk” and “Aerodynamic” intertwine so brilliantly into the mix, how the tracks manage to simultaneously elide with and transcend those records that they are fortunate/unfortunate enough to be mixed with.
Then of course there are the remixes and samples. Artists as far afield as Kanye West and Rollo Tomassi will pinch and borrow Daft Punk’s inescapable beats unleashing them on a new and unprepared audience. In Kanye’s case he rode “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” all the way to the top of the charts.
Then the grand re-think occurs. Two or three years after Daft Punk depart the scene and go on another endless hiatus, those critics who once were skeptical begin to rewrite those mediocre reviews. Suddenly Homewerk becomes a five star classic, and suddenly music fans begin to speak of Daft Punk in hushed reverent tones all over again, setting themselves up for the next disappointment.
The mystery has been uncovered. Daft Punk don’t make proper LPs, and Homework, Discovery and Human After All certainly haven’t got any better, it’s just that their true purpose has been revealed. Daft Punk create collections of beats, samples and hooks, designed to layer and intermix with one another in the live arena.
Entire tracks like “Short Circuit”, “Steam Machine” and “Rollin And Scratching” exist only so that they can be reduced down to 15 samples which can seamlessly provide a segue from one hit to the next, or to beef up that final bass drop of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”.
So as critics scratch their heads and wonder why the long awaited Tron Legacy Soundtrack sounds so patchy, and while millions of fans rant in frustration “I waited five years for this!?!?!”; we should all remember that Daft Punk, whisper it, don’t make good records, they never have.
It’s time Daft Punk gave up the ghost and started releasing strings of singles and EPs and stopped getting everyones’ hopes up, because even though we should know what to expect, we can’t help but get carried away everytime a Daft Punk record is looming on the horizon.
Still thirteen years after Homework it’s hard to be mad, Daft Punk still make the best worst albums in the world, andTron Legacy is no exception.
So please Daft Punk lets have an end to disappointing faux albums and let’s have more moments like these:
1 comments:
Yeah, no.
I understand you probably thrive off of the live moments that DP gives out whenever the duo plays collectively on a big stage - however, these moments build off of what they made off the albums. It's that inspiration made in the albums that also make up what they do live too.
I understand that you're all butt ravaged over the fact people like stuff you don't - but it's time you deal with it. It's society's choice on whether or not they want hype over a new daft album or not. If you don't like that, then don't complain.
Also, you honestly expect Daft Punk to give up just making ANY albums as a whole? How the fuck are they gonna make any money then? Christ, you might as well run out and say "I WANT YOU TO QUIT YOUR JOB BECAUSE I'M PROBABLY JEALOUS OVER THE FACT I DON'T HAVE A LIVING LIKE THEM." They need money, and that's how they get it.
Also, don't know if you knew this, but it's "Homework" bro, not "Homewerk." You sure are professional at providing opinions, I'll give you that, but not details in your reviews.
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