Daft Punk

Paris, the year 2000. Three years have passed since the blistering "Homework", and for Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter the time has come to send a second shockwave through the world of dancefloors and pop music at its most unrestrained. Curiosity is simply at fever pitch. In a short time, the two Frenchmen had become something far more solid and substantial than "a bunch of daft punk" (as they were initially, and unfortunately, dubbed by the famous British magazine Melody Maker), and anticipation for their next move was starting to weigh as heavily as that surrounding the biggest international celebrities. Then again, after a chart-shredding bomb like "Around The World", it really couldn't have been otherwise.

In this exhausting hunt for details and gossip, the first reservations are dispelled by "One More Time", the future opening track and lead single from the record, which immediately reveals the duo's staggering form. Adding fuel to the frenzy is the gorgeous animated video that would go on to introduce "Interstella 5555", the 2003 animated film created by Leiji Matsumoto and entirely inspired by Daft Punk's second album. What definitively wipes away any remaining skepticism, though, is the two Parisians' stratospheric ability to craft effective melodies capable of sweeping literally anyone off their feet. The choice to put the late American house producer Anthony Wayne Moore, aka Romanthony, on lead vocals (!) is certainly an original one. Just as the use of auto-tune software as a vocal fix initially raises some eyebrows. But it's just another false impression, thoroughly disproved by the quality of the substance itself.

"One More Time" fully embodies Daft Punk's shapeshifting spirit. It captures their essence in an irresistible interweaving of house grandeur and pop brightness. It's a total, definitive apotheosis that will remain supreme as time goes by. And it's the single that would catapult the two "introverted" producers to the very top of the dancefloor Olympus.

Four months go by and "Discovery" finally hits stores worldwide. The title is telling. On one hand, the duo seem to want to point us toward some exhilarating discovery. On the other, it could be read as a message about the ongoing disco mutation, ironically spelled backwards ("Very Disco"). The two readings run parallel without excluding one another. Indeed, various statements from both members would reveal a clear intent to somehow revitalize the disco music of the late Seventies and early Eighties, giving voice to a hidden passion for that sonic universe, in a kind of rediscovery of their own childhood and musical memories. It's no coincidence that official and unofficial samples of every kind, tied in some way to the past, are scattered throughout (Eddie Johns, Sister Sledge, Edwin Birdsong, George Duke, Electric Light Orchestra, The Imperials, Barry Manilow).

The impact is certainly overwhelming, and it lays out the coordinates of a retroactive revolution that flattens and disorients. Where "Homework" had chased trails that were at times properly techno, reworked with an android swagger and, when needed, made acidic by a heavy dose of electro, "Discovery" reveals with vivid ease Daft Punk's exquisitely pop spirit. The retro attitude is now driven by a new self-awareness, by a kitsch lightness that plays with crowd-pleasing riffs, bells and synthetic flourishes ("Aerodynamic").

Moments like "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" grab you with their extraordinary, disarming rhythmic simplicity. A track that keeps making history. Sampled and squeezed everywhere. Kanye West is just one of many to have benefited from it. The joyous "Crescendolls", meanwhile, opens the doors to a world where past and present blend through an electro-Caribbean dance, its cymbals softened with surgical mastery. The magnet is pulled even further in the relentless groove of "Superheroes", an intergalactic escape straight out of a video game.

There's also room for well-earned moments of relaxation ("Nightvision", "Something About Us"), in which night and moon seem to mirror themselves in a sea whose waves break gently, accompanied by an ethereal, faintly pulsing synth. At the same time, Marc Cerrone's evergreen "Supernature" is slowed down in "Veridis Quo" through an ecstatic, Moroder-esque embrace that would anticipate future musical movements aimed at reviving disco sounds from the second half of the Seventies, like the one created in 2006 by Johnny Jewel and his Italians Do It Better Records, or kindred spirits of the caliber of Kavinsky. But perhaps the most precious gem in this astonishing sonic box is the widely celebrated "Digital Love". Composed with the acclaimed Chicago producer Carlos Sosa, better known as DJ Sneak, it's a sonic fresco from which a spirited electro-house sensuality emerges. A red-hot hit that would soundtrack sunsets and summer parties across every corner of the Old Continent (and beyond).

"Discovery" is, in the end, an album that is simply unique in its genre. A record in which the urge to dive back into the carefree spirit of the past follows every possible direction, giving birth to something incredibly "new", and whose pulse seems to escape the very rules of time in a miracle that is, in its own way, unrepeatable.

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20/07/2014