Daft Punks's "Discovery" : Classic or Dud

It's a good question (should be noted that the drums and main sample drop out but the organ never drops out and the tambourine comes in and out).

It also ties it to the space disco concept. Having a breakdown of 2 minutes with nothing but vocals and a synth both drenched in reverb gives a feeling of floating in outer space.

they’re horns

the breakdown is definitely the best part of "one more time," won't hear any arguments to the contrary i'm sorry

In the breakdown!?

It sounds like some synth organ with heavy reverb to me not like horns but what do I know. Whatever it is, my point stands: that elongated breakdown makes it stand out from the rest. I can understand maybe not liking the song, but saying it’s fodder is unfair.

oh the breakdown. sorry.

no it is unfair, it's just that i came to it being played alongside a lot of stuff i just couldn't connect to at the time

In the Clubhouse discussion that got posted on one of these threads, Todd Edwards talks about the recording process of “Face to Face,” and he talks about stringing together samples from a bunch of different records but doesn’t mention anything being re-recorded. They may have layered on top of samples in some instances to thicken the parts in the mix but I don’t think it was possible for Daft Punk to fully recreate these samples so faithfully. They don’t have ‘70s session chops and they were working out of a home studio.

― eisimpleir (crüt), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:58 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I’ll admit I forgot about “face to face” of course Todd Edwards style is to distort samples beyond recognition and clip them to short instances of unrecognizable-ness

But I’m still questioning the idea that the songs that ie seem to interpolate “get down Saturday night” for example actually sample get down Saturday night

oh I didn't realize you were talking about that one! I don't think Voyager is a sample tbf, I've heard the comparison before but it sounds very different to me

After getting texted random opinions about Discovery, I have decided to rewatch Interstella 5555, and I'm already feeling that same anxiety I felt during Aerodynamic!

On the topic of sampling / acknowledgement on the album - an LA Times subscriber-exclusive story about Eddie Johns, whose "More Spell On You" was sampled for One More Time (but uncredited), living in homeless situations for years... while DP have been paying royalties, to a local company that swallowed some catalogue in 1995.

Still so so f***ing good. All of it. Hard to believe I now have co-workers as old as this record!

Rundgren/Buggles/ZTT comparison way upthread in the halcyon days is very otm.

Yeah. Absolutely loved Homework at the time as was massively into techno back then but this is definitely my favourite of theirs now.

Cherished memory: taking the train across Chicago on a class break to Gramophone Records to pick up the (one-sided) 12" of this the day it came out. Returning for classes, training home and then playing it later that night at a pretty good-sized warehouse party where I would imagine 95% of the dancers had no idea what it was.

Lovely memory, I have since lost it but the Daft Club credit card had a spot in my wallet for many years

Great memory! Reminds me of a night Basement Jaxx dj'ed in NYC to a packed room. A phenomenal set of house and dancey post punk classics which slowly morphed into an unannounced preview for "Rooty". The crowd went bananas (no pun) with each new tune.

That sounds amazing, Psychocandles

A real polarizing one. As an older millenial I love this album, including OMT. Older than me, Gen X? Anywhere from just-not-their-thing to really despising it. Younger than me, Gen Z: one of the most, if not THE seminal dance music album lol.

maybe it is an age thing as i just dgaf about it. would not make my top 1000 best dance records.

i do think a couple of tracks are ok.

Definitely all time for me. What's not to love?

And I'll say this now: I can give or take pretty much all their other albums, probably make a nice comp of the best of those records, but there is nothing on Discovery I don't really really enjoy. It's their masterpiece, undoubtedly

A real polarizing one. As an older millenial I love this album, including OMT. Older than me, Gen X? Anywhere from just-not-their-thing to really despising it. Younger than me, Gen Z: one of the most, if not THE seminal dance music album lol.

― Reeves Gabrels' Funko Pop (majorairbro)

It’s kind of a “skip a gen” thing that happens a lot. Plenty of Gen X thought of several rock acts of the 70’s as boomer music, but milennials loved their dose of 70’s rock. I guess for Gen Z discovering “classic” albums from the early 00’s is similar to Milennials discovering Innervisions or Dark Side of the Moon or something like that.

by far their best album

It helps keeping it in mind as an aging act to probably take a decade off and have children or whatever after your prime and come back a hero to the next generation.

Are Gen Z really into Discovery? Great if so, cause I find most younger Gen Ys seem to think RAM is their best, which is totally baffling to me

Daft Punk did the right move retiring in 2013 as they would’ve risked losing their momentum.

They left pretty much untouched and seen as the coolest music ever even when the last album was frankly subpar. You’d see it at the top of eoy lists everywhere that year - as well as “get lucky” on the tracks polls - but by the end of the decade the shine got lost and very few people cared about it

Are Gen Z really into Discovery? Great if so, cause I find most younger Gen Ys seem to think RAM is their best, which is totally baffling to me

― Roz

From the few times it has entered conversation with them my perception was that they all love Discovery and think it’s their best but very underrated. They think the popular one is RAM - which maybe chart wise they have a point - and that more people should get into Discovery. I was a bit baffled when they told me Discovery was like a lost gem.

Maybe it's because Get Lucky is kind of a "Hey let's do a big Discovery-style pop banger" song whereas most of the rest of the album is rainy sad jazz robot music, so people who enjoyed that one growing up also enjoy Discovery. Just a guess

Also it's 20+ years old now so ripe for retro-nostalgia

i can understand thinking discovery is underrated if your experience of daft punk in pop culture is just them being the one-hit wonders who made "get lucky" (which it would be for a lot of younger people) - finding out that they made some great and quite stylistically different music much earlier must seem quite odd

my take as someone on the edge of gen y/z depending on definitions is that it has some fantastic, all-time classic singles and a few great moments beyond that but i don't really care about the middle section too much

a group of twenty somethings lit up when i played 'digital love' the other night. that doesn't usually happen.

They left pretty much untouched and seen as the coolest music ever even when the last album was frankly subpar. You’d see it at the top of eoy lists everywhere that year - as well as “get lucky” on the tracks polls - but by the end of the decade the shine got lost and very few people cared about it

― ✖✖✖ (Moka)

I'm not sure this is totally true. Pitchfork definitely lowered their score when they did that albums revaluation thing a couple of years ago, but I think a lot of people are still into that album. At the record shop I work at in Saint Paul we sell a ton of Daft Punk and Random Access Memories is their biggest seller. People were even willing to shell out for the deluxe version earlier this year as well. It's still rated very highly on Rate Your Music (bolded and has 3.7 rating which is higher than Homework). It did appear in a few end of decade lists too including our very own. A lot of people did cool on it, but it's hardly a Be Here Now situation or anything.

Yeah you’re right “not cared about it” is too harsh… I meant that the hype of it definitely died down.

Here on ILM per example Get Lucky was voted #1 song of the year and RAM #2 album of 2013.

By the time we rolled the eod poll “get lucky didn’t even made it into the top 100 and RAM placed #56 several places below other albums from 2013.

46 years old and Discovery was a huge album for me. I already owned Homework which I liked but didn’t love. Discovery >>> live albums > homework >>> HAA = RAM

Yeah agree with that ranking tbh

Discovery is very clearly their best album imho. They could’ve probably trimmed a couple of tracks - personally I’d probably get rid of the 1-2 pack of “superheroes”, “high life” which are ok songs but make the album lose steam after those great 4 opening tracks. Crescendolls into nightvision works for me - I know the latter sounds like filler but it helps bring down the energy to settle into “something about us” and the album would benefit of being 12 tracks instead of 14.

Also most definitely edit “too long” into “not too long” and save the “too long” version as a b-side or whatever. I know some people like it but it’s a terrible closer as it stands.

I really like how superheroes morphs though… it kind of redeems the whole thing for me. Still, it would have worked better as a b-side to Aerodynamic or something.

it’s weird to think of somebody finding Discover _after_ RAM and i would love to hear what they thought of Homework then (which i’ll always rate higher than anything else but i do enjoy Discovery for what it is and hey, it’s got Todd Edwards)

also a record store guy over here! I would say that RAM sells very well, but Discovery and Homework seem to sell a little better, simply because they've been a little less available the last ten years... it seems like more of a score for customers. Some people were willing to shell out for the deluxe edition, but not many. A $60-$120 box set for any album from 2010 to present is not as appetizing as you'd think.

Yeah you’re right “not cared about it” is too harsh… I meant that the hype of it definitely died down.

Here on ILM per example Get Lucky was voted #1 song of the year and RAM #2 album of 2013.

By the time we rolled the eod poll “get lucky didn’t even made it into the top 100 and RAM placed #56 several places below other albums from 2013.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:21 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah that's an incredible phenomenon. I remember DJing a work's summer party the year it came out and I had to break my "no song more than once" three times in the night becaus people loved it so much. Later I went on holiday with a bunch of friends and that song was on repeat. And I didn't care - I loved it!

Daft Punk were back with an actual cool song, one everyone could dance and sing along to. It was OMT all over again. Of course it was SOTY.

These days? Oh jesus, I never need to hear it again. Never ever ever. Shaky video footage of mashed up townies in Ayebeefa. Endless plays on the local radio station I work for jammed in next to 'Rude' and 'Galway Girl'... Never!

But I think another big factor is the context of hearing it on RAM. Call it the "Fat Of The Land" factor: Big band comes back with a world-dominating mega-hit that everyone goes ballistic for. But when the album comes out, it's underwhelmingly all of the same pallette, with said single being the key highlight. It's not that the album is bad, not at all, but it feels more like different, varyingly paler, iterations of the big hit single, which ends up having an adverse effect on one's perception of the single.

I love the mid section of Discovery after the opening four-song hit salvo.

'Crescendolls' is a proper party banger in its own right.

'Nightvision' is a nice, short, well-needed salve with those synth washes which I always enjoy.

'Superheroes' harks back to Homework with its repetitive filter sample 4/4 thing going on. Always used to enjoy getting stoned with my best friend at uni and trying to figure out what they were singing. We settled on "golf in the air". Love the triumphant 16-bit marching-band vibe as well - makes me think of when you win the Gold Cup in Super Mario Kart. Aptly named.

'High Life' and maybe 'Voyager' are the two track I might drop if I absolutely had to as they don't bring much new to the table. Still, neither is unpleasant or boring. I'd be sad to lose either of them and they serve as well-placed pacers to guide the flow of the album*.

'Something About Us' is gorgeous and I would have it on any Best Of playlist. You could say it sets the template for RAM, but it works so well here and the interplay between the bass and guitar is just so satisfying. The lyrics have, at once, that slightly janky Euro feeling while still being very touching. This is going to sound ridiculous but it makes me think of ABBA - maybe not as tragic as something like 'One Of Us', but there's something about the melancholy groove that hits the same way for me.

As a big fan of JRPG soundtracks, 'Veridis Quo' I would also include on any 'Best of' playlist. Not much to say other than I love this sort of medieval village SNES adventure story vibe.

*I'd hold this up as being one of those records that flows perfectly, which I can happily listen to all the way through as a performance rather than skipping anything or feeling like anything juts out too badly.

Veridis Quo also one of my favorite bits on the album.

“Something about us” probably their best song to crossover into other genres. I’ve heard live renditions of it as a jazz improv instrumental, a groovy funk number and a cafeteria band version with piano and acoustic guitars. Sounded great in every version.

i can understand thinking discovery is underrated if your experience of daft punk in pop culture is just them being the one-hit wonders who made "get lucky" (which it would be for a lot of younger people) - finding out that they made some great and quite stylistically different music much earlier must seem quite odd

― ufo, Monday, August 7, 2023 8:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is a pretty cool phenomenon, maybe something that could be its own thread. for me I had this experience with Underworld, I only knew Born Slippy and Beacoup Fish, when I discovered all the stuff they'd done prior to that it really blew my mind. I guess it wasn't terribly different but I'd thought of them as being similar to Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Bros. so hearing that stuff was really cool. I love the stories of people in the 80s really digging "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and then discovering Close to the Edge a few months later.

Happened a lot for me when I was 11, 12 in the mid 90’s. My first approach for several “legacy” acts was with their most recent hits as presented in compilations like “Now!” So per example this were all songs I first heard by these artists:

The Cure - mint car
Rolling Stones - anybody seen my baby
Inxs - elegantly wasted
Pet shop boys - se a vida e
Def leppard - slang
Queen - heaven for everyone
Bon jovi - something for the pain

Just to name a few… it was weird there were massive fans of these bands by what I had sampled. It would take at least another 4 years for me to actually start listening to any of these bands and realize I had started with all the wrong tracks and albums.

probably a lot of people having that same experience with Animal Collective in 2009

Also Radiohead I guess, for many younger generations their first Radiohead album was hail to the thief or in rainbows.

For me it was the Velvet Underground. The only LP (in print or otherwise) I could find when I got into them was the 1985 odds & ends comp... which is not to say it wasn't a great listen but certainly not on par with the big 4. Then a couple years later I found a SEALED copy of WLWH for $8.99 lol.