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An electronic album with robotic-sounding love songs, electric guitar riffing conceived as a tribute to guitar legend Eddie Van Halen, and circus-esque sounds that wouldn't be out of place on a late model Tom Waits album?
Well, as Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter says, "We set out to make an album to surprise ourselves." Bangalter and partner Guy-Manuel de Hommem Christo have succeeded in creating a work that will surprise a lot more people than just the French pair. The disc still has the infectious house hooks that fans of the pair's debut, Homework, have come to expect. At a recent sold-out stint at Los Angeles' Giant, legendary New York house DJ "Little" Louie Vega spun the album's lead single, "One More Time," as a cornerstone of his set. If this crowd is any indication, the song, which has gone Number One worldwide, is likely to follow suit here in the U.S.
However, there's no lip service involved when Bangalter says, "We didn't want to make Homework again." As Bangalter himself admits, the pair would've made their lives much easier if they had been willing to revisit their first album more in the making of Discovery. If nothing else, it would not have taken four years between the two works. But just as they set out to surprise themselves, they set out to teach themselves something new, which accounts for the lengthy period between albums according to Bangalter. "Because we wanted to learn something new in the making of this one, it took a long time to do."
Just as the pair knew what they wanted to do in the recording of Discovery, they had a very clear goal of what they wanted the finished product to be like. "On this album we wanted to do something different," Bangalter says. "We really wanted to work a little bit more on emotion and transmit not only the dance and powerful energetic beat, but a bit more soul."
To help them achieve those goals, the normally insular duo enlisted the aid of Romanthony, whose vocals bookend the album on "One More Time" and "Too Long," and Todd Edwards, who sings on "Face to Face," a track he co-produced as well. It's an honor being invited to participate in a Daft Punk album by Bangalter and Christo, who oversee everything from the artwork and the logo to videos. How did the new vocalists qualify? "Romanthony and Todd Edwards were some of the people we admired most and had the most influence on us in the area of house music," Bangalter explains. "They have always been able to work and express themselves at a really high emotional level."
For Daft Punk, the collaborative process extends beyond music to visual mediums as well. The pair, who say they admire Andy Warhol's multimedia model that encompassed film, music, art and more, will be appearing as robots in a short film by French directors Alex and Martin, who redesigned their robot faces for their current look. However, Bangalter is hesitant to divulge much at this point, saying, "We will do something with them in a short film as we are robots now. But that's still one of the surprises to come with the whole Discovery."
If the surprises are seemingly never-ending with Discovery, that's the way the pair envisioned the project, which transcends a simple CD and is more in line with an event thanks to the ambitious Daft Club. The Daft Club combines the premise of old-time radio show clubs, where fans entered through mailing in letters or postcards, with twenty-first century technology. Consumers who purchase Discovery will get a membership card, which will access a Web site where they can download free music. "Discovery is the starting point. You'll have the fourteen tracks on the album, but with the card maybe the next day you can have some new material or new remixes by us or other people," Christo says.
The motivation behind the Daft Club isn't hard to guess. And Christo confirms that it was indeed conceived as a way to offer an alternative to Napster and other such Internet bastions of free downloads. However, while business needs may have served as the inspiration, Christo says the two are most excited about the prospect of keeping new music streaming on an ongoing basis. "As far as spending the next year doing remixes, providing music for the Daft Club and hosting the Daft Club it is a really fun idea to us," says Christo.
An Internet club hosted by a pair of French robots who make electronic music with electric guitars? It's a brave new world all right. And Daft Punk are leading the way.
STEVE BALTIN
(March 24, 2001)