Daft Punk - Human After All

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.

you guys are babies. 'steam machine' doesn't sound annoying it sounds cool as hell

I like Daft Punk, but I don't get why we are supposed to accept them as utterly beyond reproach.

because discovery is fucking awesome

D40 otm

Discovery is the boring album

The poppier they became, the worse they were

RAM is their poppiest album. I have the absolute opposite problem with it in that it's had a lot of the rough edges smoothed off completely, and the glances at experimentalism (Giorgio By Moroder) don't really land well enough to stand up to future listens. It's a strangely forlorn little album for one that spawned Get Lucky. I can't get my head around the idea that Discovery is boring though.

RAM is abjectly terrible

they tricked EDM fans into buying a record that sounds like early '80s Deodato which is hilarious to me

they really have an all-time weird career arc

i appreciate ram as an exercise still, making explicit connections between your music and not just the records but the very context of the records that inspired it ('70s/'80s disco/boogie/r&b played by crack studio musicians and sounding like it was produced by quincy jones)? pretty dope

also makes way more sense as a final record probably

whoever said "fragments of time" -> "doin it right" was a peak for them was correct

the release of ram coincided with me getting really into post-disco and electro-r&b and for that i will cherish it as like a talisman or a prism forever

RAM is definitely one of those albums where every track individually sounds pretty great but I cannot get into it at all as an album. by the time "Game of Love" comes on I want to put on literally anything else

it is an enormous unwieldy album experience for sure

whoever said "fragments of time" -> "doin it right" was a peak for them was correct

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 24, 2021 10:42 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sup

The poppier they became, the worse they were

I agree with this take at the same time as I think Discovery is their best (really only) album.

whoever said "fragments of time" -> "doin it right" was a peak for them was correct

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 24, 2021 10:42 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sup

― J. Sam

X3

well at least a couple of people came to praise DP not to bury them

Agree that RAM is a bit much to digest in one go despite being made up of some strong elements.

It veers wildly around in mood,so that even the more ebullient moments harbour a twinge of defeated melancholy. One minute we're being invited to Give Life Back To Music, but immediately having the wind taken out our sails with the sad robot music of Game Of Love. This happens throughout, and I'm never quite sure if I'm really meant to be losing myself to dance, or if this is a reverse bathos going on.

i think there are several reasons why it doesn't matter whether you think an album released in 2013 works as a consistent piece beginning to end

or an album released in 2005 even if we're just going to randomly access threads

Does the year it came out matter? One of the things I like about Discovery is how well sequenced it is, which is further cemented by how it was used on Interstella 5555

RAM has the best sequencing of all their albums!

yuman after yall

Xp maybe the second half, but I find the sequencing of the first three tracks really odd and jarring

So, I spent an evening editing this down from 45 to 30 minutes, which was surprisingly easy given its loopy, minimal nature. No song is longer than 4 minutes, and some songs like Emotion, The Brainwasher and the title track sound a bit less wanting as they express their core ideas more concisely. I took maybe one creative liberty on a transition, but other than that the edits almost feel completely natural.

Here's a link if anyone's interested:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AeBYVJiThQafBqqtp28CKmShiOsqcqfD?usp=sharing

Downloading now. Sounds interesting

Well that was enjoyable. Definitely felt like an easier listen and less like I was being pummelled into submission in certain places. That said, in others I missed the pummelling, particularly on the first two tracks which I always liked just fine. I did enjoy the artistic liberty you took with Prime Time (I think) though, that was fun

🤮

Thanks! The creative liberty I think I was referring to was the edit to only a single "Technologic" before the first drop instead of four. The fact that didn't actually stick out as noticeable is a victory I think hah.

Re: PTOYL, it was the hardest song to edit, because it's the only one on the album I actually enjoy its full length for the most part. However, I forced myself to get it below 4 mins just to see, and was able to slice out the 2nd half of the intro successfully. Flows better now I think, but I did cut out the part with the most personality. I still think most people casually listening wouldn't even notice. It's basically an album of radio edits.

Thanks for the work - this is kind of reminiscent of the Rex the Dog compilation.