Album review

Daft Punk

A Personal Voyage of Discovery

Paris 

16/03/2001 - 

Discovery, the sequel to Daft Punk's seminal debut album Homework, landed in record stores this week, causing a bigger stir than a UFO. Oozing with 80s' influences, Discovery has sparked a wave of controversy in the French music community, fans hailing the new Daft Punk opus as revolutionary while electro purists moan about sell-out and hyper-marketing. RFI/Musique decided to get to the bottom of the Daft Punk phenomenon and went along to meet Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter at their Parisian HQ.

When One More Time, the first single from the new Daft Punk album, began spinning on DJs' turntables it sent shockwaves reverberating through the French music world. What had happened to the duo's super-charged house beats and slick music gimmicks? And, more to the point, what were France's hippest electro duo doing playing around with Eurodance grooves more suited to a Cher album? Purists went into denial, claiming the single had to be some kind of musical joke. But Daft Punk had the last laugh on us all - One More Time, featuring guest vocals by Romanthony, is the opening track on their second album Discovery!

Intrigued by this radical change of musical direction, RFI tracked Daft Punk down at their record company, Labels, and attempted to uncover the truth about the unexpected follow-up to Homework. On the way to our rendez-vous my mind kept flashing back to the old days when Homem-Christo and Bangalter were so paranoid about interviews that they kept reporters at arm's length and hid behind plastic masks in their music videos. These days the two French electro prodigies (aged just 21 and 22 when Homework came out!) seem more at ease with their media fame, fielding journalists' questions with amazing calm and serenity.

Giving carefully timed interviews (half-an-hour and not a minute more!) to the hordes of radio journalists pouring through the doors, the pair appeared to be totally relaxed about the fact that in less than 48 hours' time, over a million copies of Discovery would be hitting international record stores. Guy took a back seat throughout most of our interview, preferring to let Thomas, the more talkative half of the duo, answer our questions. Dressed in an old brown T-shirt, which had obviously seen better days, Thomas explained the basic differences between Homework and Discovery.

"You can take the title (of the new album) any way you like, he says. There's obviously a reference to the space shuttle going on there somewhere but there's also the idea of discovery in general. Personally, I lean more towards the second interpretation. It's like we've been on our own personal voyage of discovery between the first and second album. We were lucky enough to sell a lot of records, make a lot of money and experience totally out-of-the-ordinary things and that meant we really got to find out what makes us happy and what doesn't!"
While Daft Punk have yet to throw off their robot masks, the new album reveals a distinctly more human side to the duo, indulging as it does in a very personal kind of nostalgia. "The thing is, house music has always looked back to the past, particularly to the disco years, explains Bangalter, so our sound isn't any more nostalgic than your average house production. OK, so most of our influences are drawn from the 70s and 80s, but if you take a close listen to the album you'll realise it's actually very eclectic. We have an enormous range of musical influences compared to a band like Oasis who draw on one single source of inspiration. We love listening to everything from house, rock and funk to baroque-style electronica."

"The way we see it, house is much more a state of mind than an actual music style. If you act any other way, the danger is house and techno will end up becoming these totally rigid genres - and we'd really hate that! What we're interested in is breaking down fixed music categories and hopping from one influence to another without taking ourselves too seriously. The most important thing for us is to crystallise an emotion on a track, the rest is purely a matter of arrangement."

While Daft Punk's detractors have been busy criticising the duo's marketing hype, they seem to have overlooked the fact that Discovery is actually full of humour and non-ironic references. "The reason there are so many references to a certain period - that's to say '75 to '85," Bangalter explains, "is that that's the decade we grew up in. What we were trying to do on Discovery is get back to that childlike state of mind when you enjoy music for what it is, without attempting to intellectualise or judge it. We wanted to get back to that feeling of spontaneity and immediacy. Basically, Homework was a sort of personal manifesto which campaigned for the mainstream acceptance of electronic music. Now that that's happened we don't want to keep rambling on about it! These days our manifesto's about taking ourselves a bit less seriously and having a bit of fun. But it's also about breaking the rules which seemed to come into force around three or four years ago - rules which say you have to do things in good taste and bow to the dictates of purism."

On their new album Daft Punk appear to have veered away from more radical forms of electro, experimenting with a softer, more pop-oriented sound. Bangalter claims he's not convinced that Discovery is a "real pop album", however. "One thing's for sure though, he says, "These days it's much more innovative to record a 4-minute electro track than drag the same idea out over ten minutes. In any case, there's no point in doing that because that's exactly what everyone else is doing! The first track we recorded for the new album was Too Long - another track featuring guest vocals by Romanthony. That track, which is actually the last one on the album, stands as our personal vision of house music. But when we'd finished recording it we decided we just weren't interested in churning out 14 tracks in exactly the same vein. I think it's fair to say we've acquired a certain know-how when it comes to club dancefloors now, so there's really no point in repeating ourselves!"
Listening to the new Daft Punk album one can't help imagining Guy and Thomas going through their childhood record collection, pulling out old favourites by Supertramp and 10cc - or even Europe's Final Countdown! In practice nostalgic sampling works superbly well on tracks such as Crescendolls and Digital Love, but comes dangerously close to ridiculous on Superheroes with its painful Goldorak-style ambiences.

While Bangalter claims he refuses to read the scores of articles written about Daft Punk, it's not escaped his notice that fans from the duo's early days are pissed off with Daft Punk's mass-marketing strategies. Purists are also disappointed that the duo has done little to help Paris's house community, one music journalist even demanding that the pair open a club in Paris to help promote the house scene. Bangalter is adamant that the duo are not prepared to take on "other people's responsibilities", however. "There's a real problem in France," he says, "when it comes to young people being successful and making money. When we did a world tour to promote 'Homework', we were attacked for asking 50,000 francs a concert. But when we pointed out that we were actually making an overall loss of two and a half million francs on the tour everyone suddenly thought we were wonderful!"

Keeping up their reputation for innovation and canny marketing, Daft Punk recently launched a counter-attack on Napster, offering fans the chance to download bonus tracks from their web site. "Personally, I'm a big fan of Napster, Bangalter says, But these days there's no difference between buying a CD in the shops and downloading it for free on Napster. It's got to the stage where when people actually go out and buy a CD it's like they're giving charity to musicians and record companies. And I'm sorry but that's just not normal."

"Personally, I don't have a problem with people copying our records from the Internet and that's why we came up with the idea of launching 'Daft Club'. Basically, when you buy the new album you get this personalised card which allows you to download bonus tracks and remixes from our web site for two years. The idea behind 'Daft Club' was to break the mould of the CD format. In the old days the act of artistic creation stopped after 71 minutes of music on a CD, but now we've found the means of prolonging it on the Net. My only gripe against Napster is that people think you can get music for free. OK, I agree that 140 francs is an outrageous price for a CD, but that doesn't mean it's worth zero francs either!"

Throwing aside the question of whether it's up to individual artists to come up with solutions to the problem of Internet bootlegging, Bangalter declares that Daft Punk are "extremely proud of having developed the project with multi-nationals and 'reactionary' businesses like record companies. It just goes to show that big business can be as innovative as small. Having said that, however, the 'Daft Club' project is costing an awful lot of money!"

As for the frequent criticisms levelled at Daft Punk's marketing strategies, Bangalter dismisses them with a laugh. "People amaze me", he says. "We fought tooth and nail to bring out One More Time without any kind of advertising or music video and then people turn round and say 'They've got such a cunning marketing strategy!' It's hardly surprising that you switch off and stop listening to what people are saying after a while. I mean, if trying to be innovative and make changes in the record industry is considered 'marketing', then OK let's just say Daft Punk's all about 'marketing'! "

One thing's for sure when it comes to Daft Punk and that is that on a musical and business level, this pair are set on ruffling a few feathers. But next time we open our mouths to criticise, perhaps we grumpy Gaulois should just remember that it's not every day a French group manages to become as big as Michael Jackson and Madonna!

Daft Punk Discovery (Virgin/Labels) 2001

Willy  Richert

Translation : Julie  Street