Discovery (Daft Punk album)

Discovery
Studio album by Daft Punk
Released	March 12, 2001 (2001-03-12)
Recorded	1998–2000 Daft House, Paris
Genre	French house, synthpop, disco house
Length	60:50
Label	Virgin
Producer	Daft Punk
Daft Punk chronology
Homework (1997) Discovery (2001) Alive 1997 (2001)
Alternative covers
Limited edition Japan cover
Reverse of limited edition Japan cover
Singles from Discovery
"One More Time" Released: November 13, 2000 "Aerodynamic" Released: March 28, 2001 "Digital Love" Released: August 21, 2001 "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" Released: October 13, 2001 "Face to Face" Released: October 10, 2003 "Something About Us" Released: November 14, 2003

Discovery is the second studio album by the French house duo Daft Punk, released in March 2001. It marks a shift in the sound from Chicago house, which they were previously known for, to disco, post-disco^[1] and synthpop-inspired house. The album provided itself as a soundtrack to the anime film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, which was a collaboration between the creators of the album, Leiji Matsumoto, and Toei Animation.

All of the music videos for the tracks on the album are segments of the film. Interstella 5555 follows a story of a kidnapped extraterrestrial band. Discovery is recognized as a concept album in reviews by New Musical Express and Spin magazines.^[2][3] Early versions of the album included a "Daft Club" membership card. The card included a code which granted access to an online music service, which featured tracks later released on the album of the same name and Alive 1997.

Theme

According to an interview with Remix Magazine Online, Thomas Bangalter stated:

This album has a lot to do with our childhood and the memories of the state we were in at that stage of our lives. It's about our personal relationship to that time. It's less of a tribute to the music from 1975 to 1985 as an era, and more about focusing on the time when we were zero to ten years old. When you're a child you don't judge or analyze music. You just like it because you like it. You're not concerned with whether it's cool or not. Sometimes you might relate to just one thing in a song, such as the guitar sound. This album takes a playful, fun, and colorful look at music. It's about the idea of looking at something with an open mind and not asking too many questions. It's about the true, simple, and honest relationship you have with music when you're open to your own feelings.^[4]

Leiji Matsumoto supervised the creation of several music videos for Discovery. The videos later appeared as scenes in the feature-length film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. It was created as a collaboration between Matsumoto, Daft Punk, Cédric Hervet and Toei Animation. The film features the entire album as its soundtrack. Regarding the album from the perspective of animation, Daft Punk stated that, "We think the music we made on Discovery has been done in a cinematic way in our minds. We were visually seeing the music and trying to find ideas that were appealing to people's imagination. An animation fan would find this mixture of elements and story in our music."^[5]

Production

A significant amount of sampling is present on the album. Rather than simply creating new music out of the samples, Daft Punk worked with them by writing and adding instrumental performance.^[6] The Discovery liner notes specify permitted use of samples for four tracks on the album: Part of George Duke's "I Love You More" is featured in "Digital Love"; Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby" was sampled for "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"; The Imperials song "Can You Imagine" is used for "Crescendolls"; Barry Manilow's "Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed" is credited for "Superheroes".

Several websites list many other samples present on the album, but Bangalter has stated that half of the samples listed are not true. He also stated the sampling they do is legitimately done, not something they try to hide.^[7] Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo estimated that half of the sampled material on Discovery was played live by the duo:

“

I play more guitar usually, and Thomas plays more keyboards and bass. There's no ego involved. We don't argue about who's playing what. You can get the sound of a guitar with a keyboard, or the opposite. We don't really care about who's doing what as long as it's well-done. At the same time, when you use samples, you don't have this problem. When you use a sampler, nobody plays on it, so the problem of the ego of the musician is not really there. For everything that we do, no matter how you get to the results, the important thing is the result.[8]

”

Featured artists

The album features guest appearances by Romanthony, Todd Edwards and DJ Sneak. In regard to working with guest artists, de Homem-Christo stated:

“

We met Romanthony at the 1996 Winter Music Conference and became friends. Before that, we mentioned his name on “Teachers,” thanking him for his influences. We wanted to invite him to sing with us because he makes emotional music. What's odd is that Romanthony and Todd Edwards are not big in the United States at all. Their music had a big effect on us. The sound of their productions, the compression, the sound of the kick drum, and Romanthony's voice... The emotion and soul is part of how we sound today. Because they mean something to us, it was much more important for us to work with them than with other big stars.[4]

”

Giving his take on working with Romanthony and Edwards, Bangalter stated:

“

We wanted to work with Romanthony and Todd Edwards on our first album. They didn't know who we were at the time, so it was very difficult to convince them. When we met Romanthony in Miami, he told us he was very into what we were doing, which made us very happy. They are the house producers who were the biggest influence on us. Working with them was a way for us to close the circle. It was very important for us to do that, because they are part of what we do. Now that we've worked with them, we are free to explore other areas. It will be interesting to see what we'll do next. Now we can work with other people.[4]

”

DJ Sneak also discussed working with Daft Punk on the album:

“

I went to Paris on one trip, got together with the boys and had a private party at the loft house where Thomas had just moved into [...] in a rare form of musical display we decided to make beats in front of a few guests. The next few days we continued to work on the music and I sat back and wrote the lyrics to "Digital Love". I had written other things but this song was very special from the get-go. I also co-produced the music and they polished it and finished a masterpiece.[9]

”

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[10]
Alternative Press	[11]
Billboard	(90/100)[12]
Entertainment Weekly	(B)[12]
NME	(9/10)[13]
Ultimate Guitar	(8/10)[14]
Pitchfork Media	(6.4/10)[15]
Q	[12]
Rolling Stone	[16]
musicOMH	[17]
Stylus Magazine	(B+)[18]

Upon release, critics noted the immediate style differences of Discovery from Homework. The change in aesthetic was a jarring move for fans of Daft Punk's earlier work and initially caused some critics to pan the album. Discovery gained praise in later years; the album ranked #12 in Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of 2000–04 and #3 in their Top 200 Albums of the 2000s despite receiving an initial rating of 6.4.^[19][20] In 2009, Rhapsody ranked the album at #12 on its "100 Best Albums of the Decade"^[21] list. It was also named the 4th best album of the decade by Resident Advisor.^[22] Q rated the album five stars out of five, an unusual occurrence for the magazine. Regarding the album's structure, the magazine Spin noted that, "It feels like a concept album -- in this case, the story of how wine-flow disco circumnavigated intellectual pretensions on all sides en route to a temporary utopia that may finally believe in nothing but the boogie but still has the infinite on its mind every minute."^[2] NME referred to Discovery as "audaciously weird" and added: "With its famously camera-shy creators now dressing as funkadelic Power Rangers, it is also something of a concept album."^[3]

The album peaked at #2 in the United Kingdom and #44 in the United States. Discovery has sold at least 2.6 million copies as of 2005.^[23] The album was certified triple platinum in France (in 2007) for shipments denoting 600,000 copies.^[24] As a result of sales, Discovery was certified Gold by the RIAA as of October 11, 2010. Two cult hits were spawned from this album: "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". The song "Face to Face" (featuring Todd Edwards) reached #1 on the Billboard Club chart in 2004. The album was included on BBC Radio 1's Masterpieces in December 2009 presented by Zane Lowe, further highlighting the progression of the reception of the album and showing how highly regarded the album is amongst fans and fellow dance artists.

Several songs from the album would later be sampled by other artists. Kanye West's song "Stronger" from the album Graduation features a vocal sample of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". "Stronger" was later performed live at the 2008 Grammy Awards with Daft Punk in their trademark pyramid while Kanye West was on stage rapping.^[25] Wiley's song "Summertime" from the album See Clear Now features a sample of "Aerodynamic".^[26] Jazmine Sullivan's song "Dream Big" from the album Fearless features a sample of "Veridis Quo". On February 18, 2011, Trinity Orchestra played the first ever live full orchestral performance of Discovery at Trinity College. The filmed performance became the most watched YouTube video in Ireland on the day of its release.^[27]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, except where noted. 

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"One More Time"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Anthony Moore	5:20
2.	"Aerodynamic"		3:27
3.	"Digital Love"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Carlos Sosa, George Duke	4:58
4.	"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Edwin Birdsong	3:45
5.	"Crescendolls"		3:31
6.	"Nightvision"		1:44
7.	"Superheroes"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Barry Manilow, Marty Panzer	3:57
8.	"High Life"		3:22
9.	"Something About Us"		3:51
10.	"Voyager"		3:47
11.	"Veridis Quo"		5:44
12.	"Short Circuit"		3:26
13.	"Face to Face"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Todd Imperatrice	3:58
14.	"Too Long"	Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Anthony Moore	10:00

Personnel

• Daft Punk – sequencers, samples, synthesizers, guitars, bass, vocals, vocoders, drum machines, programming, production, concept, art direction
• Romanthony – lyrics, vocals on "One More Time" and lyrics, vocals, co-production on "Too Long"
• DJ Sneak – lyrics on "Digital Love"
• Todd Edwards – lyrics, vocals, co-production on "Face to Face"
• Nilesh Patel – mastering
• Alex & Martin – concept, art direction
• Cedric Hervet – concept, art direction
• Gildas Loaëc – concept, art direction
• Simon Scott – concept, art direction
• Daniel Vangarde – concept, art direction
• Pedro Winter – concept, art direction
• Mitchell Feinberg – liquid metal photos
• Luis Sanchis – piano photo
• Tony Gardner & Alterian – bionics engineering
• Tamiyuki "Spike" Sugiyama – Tokyo connector

References

1. ^ (2001) CMJ New Music Monthly - Best New Music - Daft Punk (Discovery): "Although it's only fair to credit Chicago with the post-disco dance style's paternal rights, the French [Daft Punk] have (at the very least) earned covered weekend privilegies." Publisher: CMJ Network, Inc. No. 93. p. 71. ISSN 1074-6978
2. ^ ^{a b} NME Review
3. ^ ^{a b} Spin magazine, June 2001, page 145.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Chris Gill, "ROBOPOP - An Interview with Daft Punk". Archived from the original on 2008-05-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20080503064751/http://remixmag.com/mag/remix_robopop/. Retrieved 2011-01-28. 
5. ^ Daft Punk Interview cartoonnetwork.com, archived from June 27, 2004. Retrieved on September 16, 2007.
6. ^ Bryan Reesman, Interview at mixonline.com
7. ^ Daft Punk speak out on sample sources: 'half of this list is not true' Retrieved on July 18, 2007.
8. ^ Daft Punk
9. ^ DJ SNEAK aka Carlos Sosa Retrieved on January 8, 2010.
10. ^ Discovery (Daft Punk album) at Allmusic
11. ^ Alternative Press
12. ^ ^{a b c} Metacritic
13. ^ NME
14. ^ http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/daft_punk/discovery/index.html
15. ^ Pitchfork Media
16. ^ Rolling Stone
17. ^ http://www.musicomh.com/albums/daft-punk-0.htm
18. ^ Stylus Magazine
19. ^ "The Top 100 Albums of 2000-04". Pitchfork Media. 7 February 2005. http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/5956-the-top-100-albums-of-2000-04-part-one/9/. Retrieved 2 October 2009. 
20. ^ "The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1". Pitchfork Media. 2 October 2009. http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/2/. Retrieved 2 October 2009. 
21. ^ "Rhapsody's 100 Best Albums of the Decade". Retrieved 12 January 2010.
22. ^ "Top 100 albums of the '00s". Resident Advisor. January 25, 2010. http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1144. Retrieved March 19, 2010. 
23. ^ Daft Punk Embraces Universal Themes... PR Newswire. Retrieved on July 25, 2007.
24. ^ "SNEP". http://www.disqueenfrance.com/fr/page-259165.xml?year=2007&type=14. Retrieved 2009-12-23. 
25. ^ Daft Punk Make Surprise Grammy Appearance with Kanye West nme.com. Retrieved on February 10, 2008.
26. ^ Grime Music Cleans Up in the Charts The Independent. Retrieved on August 21, 2008.
27. ^ Trinity Orchestra plays Daft Punk youtube.com. Retrieved on April 29, 2010.

External links

• Discovery at Discogs
• Virgin Records Daft Punk official website for Discovery
• Interview video about Discovery
• Discovery at Metacritic