Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream

I’ve thought about doing a “revisiting” feature for a while, bringing forth each time a great album from the past that this blog never reviewed.

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (the robots on the left)  probably don’t mean much to you because they don’t want to mean much to you. They’d prefer to be referred to Daft Punk, in the guise of their technological wizardry and sampling prowess. Perhaps no one in the history of music has done what Daft Punk has done to such success. Essentially, they took the principles of hip-hop and disc jockeying and set the bar as high as anybody could. The secret to DP’s success is a relatively simple formula: a short intriguing sample from past song + dynamite, danceable computer instrumentation + kitsch.  And though I’ll be the first one to tell you that Daft Punk have hit and missed quite a bit, there’s no denying that Discovery will go down as their greatest and one of the greatest albums of this decade.

Though Discovery wasn’t their first foray into electronic music (see Homework), it was their first endeavor in creating infectiously addicting synthpop.  But the true genius is turning each sample they used into an instrument in their own regard. Who would have thought that Eddie John’s “I Put a Spell on You” would have been so excellently melded into the leading track “One More Time”? The escalating guitar solo of “Aerodynamic” crescendos right in to a sample of Sister Sledge’s “II Maquillage Lady”, only to succumb to the cosmic reverb of a synth and the ringing of a single bell. George Duke’s “I Love you More” gets new life as part of the pop-friendly, auto-tuned “Digital Love”, which by all accounts is actually how a computer apparently professes its love for a counterpart.  And we know that Kanye’s listened to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, and unfortunately we know that some of Kanye’s listeners have never heard of Daft Punk. And if you listen closely to “Face to Face”, you’ll find that ELO’s “Evil Woman” finds its way into the song (with that little guitar run just before ELO sing the song’s namesake).

As if Daft Punk’s legacy hasn’t already been properly taken care of (what with the crazy life tours they’ve done), they teamed up with childhood hero Leiji Matsumoto to create an animated visual realization of Discovery, called Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. I have yet to see it, but I hope to get a copy of it soon.

Get a copy of Discovery.

Listen to “Superheroes”

Listen to “Digital Love“

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.