Essential Albums: Daft Punk - Discovery

February 22nd 2021 marked the final day of Daft Punk’s 28 year career. There was no fanfare, no farewell tour or live album, no final record or last hurrah, just a YouTube video that told fans all they needed to know, that Daft Punk was over. The group’s final record, Random Access Memories, was released in 2013. Their last tour was in 2007. Despite only fleeting evidence of activity since Random Access Memories, the duo’s farewell provoked a monumental reaction. To not commemorate the end of a career like that of Daft Punk’s would be scandalous. So, it’s time for an essential albums review: Daft Punk’s 2001 sophomore record Discovery. They do not come much more essential than this.

In 1997, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, two seemingly ordinary French producers, released Daft Punk’s debut record Homework. The album was slick, efficient and was responsible for some of the late ‘90s biggest house tracks like ‘Around the World’ and ‘Da Funk.’ It was a hugely rich era for house and electronic music, with the genre branching out from its Detroit and Chicago roots. The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim were crafting the sounds of Big Beat, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada were pioneering IDM, and instrumental hip-hop was beginning to attract mainstream attention too. Furthermore, techno and house scenes were fully formed in Berlin and Paris, integrating Europe into the genre’s canon. Electronic dance music of this era can be defined as both prolific and saturated. Coming out of Daft Punk’s debut, the duo needed something definitive to ensure their music was not derivative of the multitude of sounds that were dominating clubs in the late ‘90s.

Daft Punk cultivated the future of dance music by reinventing the sounds of the past

Their solution was 2001’s Discovery, a record with which Daft Punk cultivated the future of dance music by reinventing the sounds of the past. An integration of Disco into their house mixes provided nostalgia, while hugely innovative production and mixing techniques facilitated the need for these reminiscent sounds to be updated. We see these ideas frequently; Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars and Carly Rae Jepsen have all done this in recent years. But Daft Punk were there first and the result was a landmark moment in the history of dance music. Additionally, Discovery was the record that first saw the duo in complete robot gear; and the music was further used as the basis of the animated film Interstella 5555. Discovery was more than the duo’s sophomore record. It was a new direction, a new concept and a complete sonic and visual reinvention. Simultaneously, this album is faithful to its influences and hugely ahead of the curve.

The album opens with ‘One More Time,’ an explosive track, heavily utilising sidechain compression in a way that would revolutionise the way producers would mix dance music for years to cone. The disco aesthetic kicks in immediately with these bright synths and jubilant, pitch-shifted vocals. The bell which sounds as the record transitions into ‘Aerodynamic’ feels like a warning, a nostalgic alarm that soon plunges the listener into the second track on this album, with its perfectly structured fluctuations between funk grooves and distorted glissandi. The grooves on this record are gorgeously mixed, ‘Face to Face,’ ‘High Life’ and ‘Superheroes’ all feature grand and dynamic beats that are made for club and dancefloor life.

Discovery stands alone as a piece of art that is separate from the clubs that played it

Despite the clear club-oriented sounds of Discovery, one of the record’s most admirable qualities is how intelligent and well formed the songs are. For a dance album, the songwriting on display is beautifully and artfully crafted. It feels almost like each song is an orchestral score. The track ‘Digital Love’ is structured like a pop song, with verses and choruses. It is more than the repetitious hooks that were the building blocks of most dance music of this era. This is what makes Discovery special. The record stands alone as a piece of art that is separate from the clubs that played it. Daft Punk were not simply mixing electronic music, they were writing exceptional ballads too. To this day, ‘Something About Us’ sounds modern, futuristic and sensual in delivery. It is a track whose core elements are apparent in the music of band’s like Gorillaz, Beach house and Tame Impala. No other dance band were audacious enough to write songs like this.

The now legendary ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ transcends the band due to its inclusion in the sample-based Kanye West song ‘Stronger.’ Yet the song’s status as a lead single makes it feel no less cohesively situated within Discovery than any other track. The pitch-altered vocals are not only reminiscent of the duo’s robotic visuals but are technically another landmark moment in terms of production. Yet again, this innovation came from the past. Kraftwerk’s vocal sounds are all over Discovery. But it is undeniable that the chopped up and pulled apart vocals on ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ were a spiritual predecessor to Burial’s Untrue, a hugely important electronic record in itself.

This record is one hour in length, yet the abundance of compositional ideas results in virtually no lulls during those 60 minutes

For all this innovation, Discovery does still play to Daft Punk’s strengths. ‘Crescendolls’ is a typically drawn out dance song and the tonal qualities of the mix are left free to grow for a full three and a half minutes. Following ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ in the track-listing, the duo allows this record to ebb and flow they transfers between these futuristic ballads and classically written dance tracks. There are moments like ‘Short Circuit’ where the record’s volatility is on show. The funk inspired groove on this track dissipated at the midway point and transforms into a near ambient synth pattern. The variety of sounds and noises on Discovery is vast but it all comes together. This record is one hour in length, yet the abundance of compositional ideas results in virtually no lulls during those 60 minutes. ‘Too Long’ is this record’s 10 minutes closer; a song during which a minimal number of ideas are pushed to their limits and extended into an expansive track. It is often criticised for its longevity. But every time that ‘can you feel it’ hook returns, the length feels justified.

It is perhaps easiest to leave this review at that. Giving away too much would be unfair to those yet to experience this record’s brilliance. It is largely unlike any other album. After all, there are very few electronic dance music records from the late ‘90s/early 2000’s that have remained culturally relevant. Even now, dance music is a genre driven by singles and superstar producers whose live sets are invested in crowd participation more than the actual mixing of tracks. Little has changed in this regard and focusing on the single can be a smart idea, both commercially and artistically. But it is Discovery that breaks this mould. It is fully formed, rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest albums from any genre of that period. It has been 20 years since Daft Punk released Discovery, but time is meaningless when music is sent from the future. Fair play guys, this really was one for the history books. The robots have departed Earth; whatever planet they now call home will be the galaxy’s eternal envy.