Discovery

Even if you bought this record just for it's liquefied metal cover, you would not be disappointed. This is truly a fantastic album in every sense of the word. And the techniques used in the creation were just fabulous. One of the things my friend said when he first heard me playing it was "the samples sound so CLEAN!" And they do. Every sample has been processed at incredibly high quality, there is no "Lo-Fi" on this record. The entire record is permeated with funky-style samples that you swear you know but just can't seem to place. Every song has some fantastic SOMETHING about it:
1.One More Time - the perfect party track! a thick thumping bassline and everybody-that's-not-a-raver's-view of the raver world lyrics -:)-, catches your attention immediately.
2.Aerodynamic - by far, the most significant bit on this track is the squealing pseudo-guitar solo. It may be simple, but it sounds REALLY COOL!
3.Digital Love - early 80's motivational tapes samples with cheesy vocoded lyrics = something still meaningful? To be honest, it's still fun to listen to, despite it's cheesiness.
4.Harder, Better Faster, Stronger - one of my favorite songs on the record. Easy to dance to, but it features one of the most incredible things I've ever heard. To understand you have to know what a vocoder is. A vocoder is a device that takes your voice, specifically the vibrations in your voice, and converts it to the tone of the instrument it is attached to, which is almost ALWAYS a keyboard for simplicity. What's really neat about Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, is that at 2:25, the vocoder is switched over to an odd device that triggers it by a guitar. It's especially obvious at certain points, where the player is playing a really neat solo. Truly interesting to hear.
5. Crescendolls - A little odd at first, but it's got the throw-your-arms-in-the-air "HEY!" sample going on. A lot of fun, eh?
6. Nightvision - a slow, short instrumental track, but still extremely well put together. I wish it were longer with some vocals.
7. Superheroes - When I looked at the sample list for the record, and saw "Barry Manilow - Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed?" I wondered "what the heck?!" But when you hear the track, and the thumping bassline and beat and "love is in the air" echoing over and over it really makes sense and the song is a lot of fun.
8. Night Life - Brings back memories of disco! And that's always a good thing, right?
9. Something About Us - Listening to the beginning of the track I was expecting Barry White to start singing. A nice slow mellow groove.
10. Voyager - A little distortion on the bassline kept it interesting.
11. Verdis Quo - After you get by the somewhat slow intro, it starts getting kind of neat, and you want to keep listening. The layers get thicker each minute, and by the end it's a real sonic jubilee.
12. Short Circuit - I can't really say anything in favour of this song, neither could amazon.
13. Face To Face - This will HAVE to be the next one on the radio! I've already remixed this into an extended version and played it at some parties where we play a lot more old-school funk and stuff. The version on the record is about 3 and a half minutes, my version was nearly 9 minutes, and still when it ended people acted dissapointed because they were getting so into the groove. I love this song!
14. Too Long - when I first saw the length of the song, I thought the title was a joke! Ten minutes? An epic pop-techno song? But yes, it's an incredibly well done track, and as Romanthony says in the lyrics, it's really been "too long" since we've heard from the Daft Punk.
In all, this is truly a fantastic record with a lot of vision. A combination of funk, pop, disco, and techno, this isn't techno up front, and it doesn't claim to be. In fact, it doesn't CLAIM to be anything. Whatever it is, it's REALLY good at being it.

Now this is interesting. Apparently these guys have been famous for quite a while, yet somehow I'd never heard of them. All that was remedied recently though. When I heard that Leiji Matsumoto had created a full-length animated feature with stunning animation based on an ablum by Daft Punk, I just had to check it out. While my opinion of that excellent piece of animation is mixed (I just didn't dig the story or think most of it matched the songs all that well), it did something to me. It made me buy the album it was based on "Discovery". Wow.

In this case, it seemed more like the music video was just a distraction than an extension of the music. When I first started listening to the album I thought it was okay, but as I progressed through it, listening to the songs in order, and then repeating some just to hear them one more time, I got HOOKED.

It's hard to describe. I love electronic music and techno and all that sort of thing, but this is different. The voices and music are all really just toyed with by the musical artists in these songs. Everything is just a way to get you into a feeling, of a rhythm, or a beat. The more you hear the songs, they more they grow on you, the more you get into them, the more you like them, the more you listen to them.

Take that song "One more time". That song is downright addictive! The beat is so infectious that I found I absolutely had to move to the song while I was listening to it. Ditto for the next three tracks. "Aerodynamic" is amazing because it uses electric guitar like a piano player uses his keyboard, not just for show, but to extend and play with a melody, finally turning it into a music-box version of itself before transforming into my favorite song on the album "Digital Love". I love that song. It's just so incredibly upbeat, happy, and beautiful. I love that song. A lot of people really love the next one, "Harder, better, faster, stronger". I didn't care for it at first, but it grows on you, to the point where I love it too now. My other favorite tracks include "Nightvision", "Superheroes" (why do I actually think of comic book superheroes when I hear that song?), and "Voyager".

This may be an acquired taste, but it's definitely a taste I'm glad I acquired. If you dig electronic music in general you should check it out. Just keep an open mind. This more than just more of the same repetitive techno/electronica you've heard. This is beautiful, original, and unique music. Great stuff. Give it a try.

Let me start by saying this CD is really great!

Its definitely Daft Punk's most 80's sounding release, but has a lot more to it than something like "Darkdancer" by Les Rhythm Digitales. Where that CD was very one sided, "Discovery" is a kaleidoscope of sound, with so much to hear on so many levels.

The beats are still there - it's like nothing has changed since '97 - but what Daft Punk seem to have done on "Discovery" for the most part is incorporate all the sounds from their childhoods (the 80's) into these tracks. That means vocoders, heavy metal guitar soloing, FM Rock keyboard sounds, computer game sounds, all stuck together with huge disco beats.

Starting with the single and opening track "One More Time", you get 14 pieces of funk without the slightly annoying interludes featured on "Homework". In fact, the only slightly interlude-ish song here is "Nightvision", and even that sounds like an 10cc / Chicago / Supertramp crossover.

Best songs here are "Digital Love" (which sounds a bit like Buggles(!)), "Harder Better Faster Stronger" (the best use of vocoder I've ever heard) and probably "Something About Us", only because it's so different from anything they've done before: It sounds like an 80's funk ballad! Hello, Level 42?!

You may have noticed that I've used the phrase "80's" a lot here. But don't be put off - this is still a very modern sounding album. In fact, it sounds amazing; the production level is very high here.

So buy it basically. If you liked "Homework", "Music Sounds Better With You", and the whole Cassius / Air / French genre, you will love this.