Daft Punk-Discovery Full Album Zip
Denisha Padley
Discovery is the second studio album by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk, released on 12 March 2001 by Virgin Records. It marked a shift from the Chicago house of their first album, Homework (1997), to a house style more heavily inspired by disco, post-disco, garage house, and R&B. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk described Discovery as an exploration of song structures, musical forms and childhood nostalgia, compared to the "raw" electronic music of Homework.
Before Discovery's release, Daft Punk adopted robot costumes. They also launched Daft Club, a website which featured exclusive tracks and other bonus material. Discovery was a critical and commercial success, peaking high across several charts internationally on release. Critics praised Daft Punk for innovating in house music as they had done with Homework. The album produced six singles; "One More Time" was its most successful, and became a club hit. In 2020, Rolling Stone included Discovery at number 236 in its updated list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
After their debut album, Homework, was released, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo spent most of 1997 touring on the Daftendirektour.[2][3] For the first half of 1998, the duo was focused on their own personal labels,[nb 1] while also working on the video collection D.A.F.T.: A Story About Dogs, Androids, Firemen and Tomatoes. In 1999 and 2000, their time was split between making music for their own labels and recording Discovery.[2] Bangalter noted that Homework influenced many other artists to mimic its sound, prompting Daft Punk to pursue a different direction to better distinguish themselves.[4]
One of the first tracks to come out of the Discovery sessions, "One More Time", was completed in 1998 and was left "sitting on a shelf" until its single release in 2000. After completing "Too Long" early in the album's production, Daft Punk decided that they "didn't want to do 14 more house tracks" in the way the genre is usually defined, and thus set out to incorporate a variety of styles for the record.[8][9] The album features musical contributions from Romanthony, Todd Edwards, and DJ Sneak. Homem-Christo noted that Romanthony and Edwards were two of the producers that had a big influence on Daft Punk. The duo had wanted to work with them on Homework, but found it difficult to convince them to do so since Daft Punk were still relatively unknown.[2] DJ Sneak wrote the lyrics to "Digital Love" and assisted in the song's production.[6][10]
Discovery is recognized as a concept album.[11][12] It relates strongly to Daft Punk's childhood memories, incorporating their love of cinema and character.[13] Thomas Bangalter specified that the album deals with the duo's experiences growing up in the decade between 1975 and 1985, rather than it just being a tribute to the music of that period.[2] The record was designed to reflect a playful, honest and open-minded attitude toward listening to music. Bangalter compared it to the state of childhood when one does not judge or analyze music.[2] Bangalter noted the stylistic approach of the album was in contrast to that of their previous effort. "Homework [...] was a way to say to the rock kids, like, 'Electronic music is cool'. Discovery was the opposite, of saying to the electronic kids, 'Rock is cool, you know? You can like that.'"[14] He elaborated that Homework had been "a rough and raw thing" focused on sound production and texture, whereas the goal with Discovery was to explore song structures and new musical forms. This change in sound was inspired by Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker".[8]
Discovery is a departure from Daft Punk's previous house sound.[15] In his review for AllMusic, John Bush wrote that Discovery is "definitely the New York garage edition" of Homework. He added that Daft Punk produced a "glammier, poppier" sound of Eurodisco and R&B by over-embellishing their pitch-bend, and vocoder effects, including loops of divas, synth-guitars, and electric piano.[16] Stylus Magazine's Keith Gwillim asserted that it is a disco album that draws on the genre's "danceable" and "sappy" elements, including its processed vocals and "prefabricated" guitar solos.[17] Other critics also described the album as post-disco[18][19] and electro-funk.[20] Retrospectively, Uproxx said the album also incorporates French house.[21]
The album's opening track, "One More Time", features heavily Auto-Tuned and compressed vocals from Romanthony.[2] The next track, "Aerodynamic", has a funk groove, halt for an electric guitar solo, and ending with a separate "spacier" electronic segment.[22] This solo, which contains guitar arpeggios, was compared to Yngwie Malmsteen by Pulse!.[23] "Digital Love" contains a solo performed by the duo using a Wurlitzer piano, vintage synthesizers and music sequencers;[22] it incorporates elements of pop,[24] new wave, jazz, funk and disco.[25] "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", the fourth track on the album is an electro-leaning song.[25] It is followed by "Crescendolls", an instrumental. "Nightvision" is an ambient track.[24] "Superheroes" leans toward the "acid minimalism" of Homework.[16] "High Life" is built over a "gibberish" vocal sample, and contains an organ-like section.[25] "Something About Us" is a downtempo song, with digitally processed vocals by Daft Punk and lounge rhythms.[25]
"Voyager" has guitar riffs, harp-like 80s synths, and a funky bassline.[26] "Veridis Quo" is a "faux-orchestral" synthesizer baroque song;[16] according to Angus Harrison, its title is a pun on the words "very disco".[26] "Short Circuit" is an electro-R&B song[16] with breakbeats[27] and programmed drum patterns.[2] "Face to Face" is a dance-pop song featuring vocals from Todd Edwards, and is more pop-oriented than the other tracks on Discovery.[16][26] In the context of the album, Bangalter noted that the preceding track "Short Circuit" represented the act of shutting down, and that "Face to Face" represents regaining consciousness and facing reality.[28] "Too Long", the album's closer, is a ten-minute-long electro-R&B song.[29]
A significant amount of sampling is present on the album. Rather than creating new music using only the samples, Daft Punk worked with them by writing and performing additional parts.[22] 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".[5] It has been observed that "One More Time" contains a sample of Eddie Johns' song "More Spell on You",[30] despite it being uncredited in the Discovery liner notes. The Los Angeles Times confirmed this following the breakup of Daft Punk and found that Daft Punk does pay royalties for the sample twice a year to the label, GM Musipro.[31]
Several websites list many other samples present on the album, but Bangalter has stated that half of the samples he had seen listed are not true. He also stated the sampling they do is legitimately done, not something they try to hide.[32] Bangalter elaborated that the newly recorded elements were implemented in a way that was equivalent to "creating fake samples [...] where people think there are samples from disco records or funk records."[33] Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo estimated that half of the sampled material on Discovery was played live by the duo,[6] and emphasized that the resulting quality of the music was more important than the ego of who played which instruments.[22]
Daft Punk initially planned to release every song on Discovery as a single, according to Orla Lee-Fisher, who was head of marketing for Virgin Records UK at the time, although this plan was eventually shelved.[34] "One More Time" was released in 2000, ahead of the album's release. The album was available on 12 March 2001,[35] with singles of "Aerodynamic", "Digital Love", "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", "Something About Us", and "Face to Face" launched afterward.
The ideas for the album's music videos formed during the early Discovery recording sessions.[13] The album was originally intended to be accompanied by "a live-action film with each song being a part of the film", according to Todd Edwards. The band decided instead to concentrate on an anime production.[34] Daft Punk's concept for the film involved the merging of science fiction with entertainment industry culture.[36] The duo recalled watching Japanese anime as children, including favorites such as Captain Harlock, Grendizer, and Candy Candy.[37] All three brought the album and the completed story to Tokyo in the hope of creating the film with their childhood hero, Leiji Matsumoto, who had created Captain Harlock.[37][36] After Matsumoto joined the team as visual supervisor, Shinji Shimizu had been contacted to produce the animation and Kazuhisa Takenouchi to direct the film. With the translation coordination of Tamiyuki "Spike" Sugiyama, production began in October 2000 and ended in April 2003.[36] The result of the collaboration was an anime film, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, which features the entirety of Discovery as the soundtrack.[37]
Shortly before the album's release, the group launched Daft Club, a website that offered exclusive tracks and other bonus material. Every Discovery CD included a Daft Club membership card bearing a unique number that provided personalized access to the website.[2] Bangalter said this was "our way of rewarding people who buy the CD".[25] The service provided by the site ended in 2003; most of the tracks were then compiled into the remix album Daft Club.[38]