Daft Punk - Human After All

Don't remember thinking the HAA leaks were fake, but I did think we would see less distorted audio on the actual release, given the pristine sound of the first two albums

The overall sound is very hot and compressed. It works in certain situations (title track), others it's just a bit "ecchhh was this a mistake or done on purpose"? I know they used a lot of guitar effects and stuff on these tunes, and you can tell - it's got a gritty, overdriven vibe that sort-of works, but sort-of doesn't.

This anticipated blog house to a tee, kind of wild

i mean, over-compressed mastering was becoming an issue by then anyway, but this is an artistic choice rather than a production decision. it's really hard to tame guitar distortion at the best of times, but seeing as it's guitars it doesn't usually matter. putting an analogue synth through digital guitar fx (which it sounds like they're doing here) gives it that sparky, overloaded sound. i think that's what this album makes me think of: a dicey power socket you're not sure if it's safe to plug the TV into. it skirts between illicit danger and the potential of a nasty shock.

Not sure if this was already posted re mastering

My one .@DaftPunk_Music anecdote is really a chance for me to share one about the late, great Nilesh Patel at The Exchange, who was always a joy to work with.

— Man With A Spleen (@manwithaspleen) February 22, 2021

Too many tracks have potential but sound unfinished

the idea that this album was lazy or rushed or unfinished pops up over and over again throughout this thread and it strikes me as as stupid now as it did at that time

turns out everyone was projecting a maximum understanding of 'effort' in the first place

low-effort kings https://t.co/xbMJBAOnBy pic.twitter.com/WON53tmRQi

— MG (@meaghan_garvey) February 22, 2021

Yes but Homework was far far more interesting in its minimalism than Human After All, imho their most boring work. It makes up for that with catchiness, but ... it's boring. If they truly wanted to make a statement and make these tracks less boring than they should have been half the length. By far the best presentation of the material from this album was in Alive 2007, which appropriately combines the hooks here with mutation and mashups with their other singles and it's perfection. This is the ultimate "phoned it in" album, and most of the comments I see here defending it simply just wave the criticisms away magically with a subjective rose colored nostalgic lenses and condescending words like "stupid". They are valid criticisms.

"make love"... "the brainwasher"... boring? okidoke

That's basically the two least boring songs on the album, which are still less dynamic than most anything on their previous two. Let's talk about how many are boring as well!

i do not view this record through a lens of nostalgia btw

Daft Punk minimalism done to perfect: Superheroes, Alive. Both those tracks >>>>>>>>>> any song on this album imho

Perfection, sorry

like "Too Long", it's too long

calling "too long" too long is one of the most immortal self-owns afaict

my 'nostalgia' of the songs on this album are arguing with people i respected (well some) and wanted to respect me as a 22 year old on ilx about it .. it flopped in the public sphere (until alive 2007) so its hard to have my interest in it driven by 'passion'

i dont know why house producers making a trackier project makes these records 'boring' unless you're looking at it through a pop lens though. repetition & such is a tool of house music and always has been...and the project has great hooks, like the breakwater sample and the title track, which are worth hearing on repeat

i feel like ppl projected all kinds of 'effort' into stuff that was house music ... samples flipped and curated to create a particular sonic world ... and they just didn't like this world as much as they liked the warmer one on discovery ... this one was way more mechanistic and grinding and leaned a bit into a trebly mix that ended up being pretty prescient about where dance music was heading (or did it help push it the way, the world may never know)

nb more people on here liked Justice as i recall, but i still like this more than Justice's debut

* so its hard to have my interest in it driven by *nostalgia* -- its purely driven by 'passion'

which is to say, all the claims about there being something wrong with the *process* of creating 'human after all' suggests to me that maybe people just werent interested in the world they created, because the tools were functionally the same! surely years of sample exposes of discovery have suggested as much

This album was like a sleeper cell waiting for people to reassess with newfound fondness upon the dissolution of its creators the whole time.

there's nothing on this record as complexly realized as "digital love" but that's not what the record's about, it's delivering a sparer and harsher sound with some additional trademark daft punk perversity (cf. "the prime time of your life" rearing up out of a sea of mechanical murk and then when it finally seems to settle on a steady beat, the vocals disappear and it speeds up, it's very funny to me in addition to sounding super cool and genuinely dynamic)

for some reason i listened to the whole daft punk discog last month so i feel like i made this breakup happen

deej otm as well

the breakwater sample in "robot rock" seems to me a very basic example of why sampling is good and awesome, let's take this one awesome part of a song and make it the whole thing

I just want to know what all the naysayers think of Rollin’ & Scratchin’

Rollin' & Scratchin' Rock'n Roll

its boring

Put on the Crydamoure Waves Vol II compilation (released a couple years prior) and compare with this album. House music has progression over time, and responds to and provokes a dance floor. Most of this album is basically 4+ minutes of a single loop, with minimal layering and depth and no sonic variation. It is not responding to or provoking a dance floor. It is just... basic. Boring. Uninteresting. It is indeed a master class in the "hook", and this is where it gets its gusto and love from. But from a song structure and arrangement standpoint (let alone production and layering) it's boring and simplistic, and if intended as a "statement", it was pretentiously and poorly executed imho.

Superheroes has a constant tension, buildup, and then dramatic and glorious release at the end. Alive is like one of these loops organically building up and mutating (as if it's alive!), responding to a dance floor with a constantly flowing and satisfying dynamism, despite being a basic loop. Btw, both these aforementioned songs are not necessarily pop, but house tracks, so to be clear I think this album is boring for house music as well as pop! None of the songs on this album are "dynamic", they set a mood through their loops and just let them run for 4 minutes with maybe a slight change here and there at the end of every 8 bars or so. Perhaps I should just edit these down to 90 second/2 minute versions and see how that plays out. Would be easy enough.

there are lots of non HAA DP songs that don't have especially dynamic or complex songwriting and are trackier and simpler. I dont for one minute think that what makes a Daft Punk song "good" is where it stands on the spectrum of complex > simple

I just want to know what all the naysayers think of Rock'n Roll

A better dance floor track than anything on this album is what it is.

Also Vitalic's remix of Technologic >>>> Technologic, which highlights in such a raw manner what this album is missing for me.

FTR I wasn't outright dissing this album upthread. I'd say I genuinely enjoy a good third of it and I'd put the first three tracks in a personal best of.

But the dead giveaway in that DP quote upthread is: "The main thing is that it sounds good". I've got no problem with dance music being quickly produced, or being repetitive or using challenging or harsh sounds.

But there are tracks on HAA that sound (to me at least) like an especially unpleasant noise or frequency repeated for 5 minutes with very little in the way of variation, lift, propulsion or a lot of the things I kind of want in dance and electronic music. It's just this slow-chugging wall of digital distortion that reminds me of bad industrial music.

I dunno, I'm not going to argue with anyone who likes those particular tracks,ymmv etc. It's just that compared to Discovery, which feel light but perfectly crafted, this is a steamroller crudely flattening the ground and choking up the air.

God I'm making it sound great, aren't I?

rock n roll is not boring, it tears the roof off

house music *shrugs*

"Robot Rock" is funny b/c it's like "actually this should be a Daft Punk song, we're taking this song now, thx" - can't argue with the results

“Steam machine” is prob the epitome of the album aesthetic to me, feel like writing that one off might explain why someone would consider the overall project a disappointment

haha totally

there are tracks on HAA that sound (to me at least) like an especially unpleasant noise or frequency repeated for 5 minutes with very little in the way of variation, lift, propulsion

More of this plz

xp

Every Daft Punk album is and obviously sounds like a different project with a specific approach. This is a positive thing about the band.


(it is also true and also good that all this stuff sounded way better stripped for parts and mixed in with other songs on the tour. oh wow a bunch of deliberately repetitive tracky techno songs could be used to transformative effect?! shocker of the decade)

there are lots of non HAA DP songs that don't have especially dynamic or complex songwriting and are trackier and simpler. I dont for one minute think that what makes a Daft Punk song "good" is where it stands on the spectrum of complex > simple

Exactly, every DP album that's not RAM has simple songs in it. But "simple" and "boring" can be mutually exclusive. I paid special attention to highlight how Alive, a song as "simple" as anything on HAA, is more entertaining and less boring than literally every song on it. For me, when I listen to HAA, I get fidgety thinking about how much better the tracks could be with minimal tweaking while simultaneously getting frustrated and annoyed at the sonic monotony. If the band were aiming for many to have that response as an artistic statement, cool - but still makes it a meh listen at best. I'll put on Homework instead.

I find the vast majority of Grateful Dead to be boring too - but that music is the opposite of "simple"

Yeah it's the same fidgetiness. It's not the repetition or the fact they set out to make a more "raw" sounding album - I'm cool with those factors, I just don't think the factors work well together here

If the band were aiming for many to have that response as an artistic statement, cool - but still makes it a meh listen at best. I'll put on Homework instead.

i dont think you need an 'if' here and i also think if you're looking for a vibe like 'steam machine' 'but less boring' it doesn't make much sense to listen to homework which is a completely different sound/aesthetic

idk, do you guys like...the trackier end of acid house or techno or industrial music? the comparison to "bad industrial music" dog latin made up thread makes me think its just a specific tonal color you guys are disinterest in, rather than finding it lacking

i suspect that part of this album's sound is based around the live event, and recognizing what gaps exist in their earlier music, and the reason people like "Alive 2007" so much is that they start to hear how all those pieces fit in together... I don't think the versions on "Alive 2007" are "better" than the ones on HAA although I do think they create a context where they make more sense ... something you could as easily say about plenty of other tracky house albums

I think it is largely the tonal colour here.
I don't think this sounds much like the trackier house/techno that I've heard, which at least sounds propulsive and hypnotic and probably still has a feeling of evolvement and change even if it doesn't do very much.
HAA sounds more like a rock album to me: the way the mid-frequencies are filled to breaking point, and the fuzz effect on all the synths etc.

The tempos too - I never really got on with some of Homework because it's this heavy, lumbering, constant chug that I'm not sure what to do with.

I mean, you get repetition and monotony in rock songs - Swans, for example. But it's hard to recreate this kind of nervous energy in the same way perhaps?

I don’t think Daft Punk originated the sound variation that Human After All leans into, but I think there’s a definitely lineage between Human After All coming out in 2005 and Ed Banger records blowing up in 2007

There’s also something to be said about the 2007 Daft Punk tour and the effect it had on the full visual spectacle EDM tours, especially in the US, in the following years. Not just from an influence on younger musicians and their aspirations when it came to touring, but from the corporate side seeing that two guys in masks could do things standing inside a giant pyramid that most of the audience has no idea about, and make a lot of money doing so in huge festival venues

I was not ready for this album in 2005

You could probably say the same thing about Homework and Discovery. If they weren’t helping originate waves, they were very shrewd about riding them, and didn’t really mine the same niche twice!

xp it was not what I wanted it to be

at the very least now it's clear that HAA provided the backbone for Alive 2007. It's almost like it was planned that way ahead of time.

I have the suspicion this album was a piss-take.

I do like “Make Love” a lot... it might be the only song in here which doesn’t drive me mad with the absurd repetition and lack of progression, it might also be the only track which doesn’t use that bitcrusher, distorted “yeah” effect sound that is used in every fucking song. Is that a bass ot a guitar thru a pedal? I’ve seen people replicating it with pedals... anyhoo it gets annoying. According to this post on reddit is used 1154 times on the album!

It sounds like a guitar when the effect is longer like on”television rules the nation” but even there I can’t stop not hearing it as a “yeah”.

But it kind of confirms that those “yeah” sounds are a distorted guitar effect cutted up to trigger on a synth or whatever.

It sounds cool alright but not cool enough to be the party trick you keep using all night.

oh for the love of god

you don't get it: it's supposed to sound annoying as shit

I get it, that’s why I think it’s a piss take.