Daft Punk

Homework (Virgin)
by Malcolm E

So, these guys are supposed to be the next big thing, huh? Everybody and their Special K dealers are talking about Daft Punk, the alleged electro masters who are sweeping the dance floors. So when Homework comes rolling through the office, I grab it and see if it’s true.

Mmmmmmm… no. Y’see, electro (electronica, techno, etc.) has gone through an evolution hundreds of times faster than any musical phenomena in history. The old standby beat of “four on the floor,” around since the age of disco, was what defined the old style of house music and all the rest of the stuff that helped pave the way for everyone from Tricky to Prodigy. But the technology, and the ideas on how to use it, has advanced so far in the last 10 years that the very fact Homework utilizes that very beat makes it sound archaic. Look at it this way: Buddy Holly can easily be said to have helped shape the way rock ‘n’ roll sounds. But you’d be hard pressed to find a Crickets record in the collection of a Nirvana fan. In the same sense, I’m no longer interested in dance records that are nothing but simplistic repetition. Even at a club dancing, and not at home in a chair, I don’t get an urge to dance to simple boom booms. What I want are rhythms that shift and jump on and off the beat and scatter themselves to the limbs of dancers. At most, Daft Punk give me a slight sense of nostalgia, but as far as whether they’ll take me into the future, I doubt it. That said, Homework is light-hearted and fun in a background music kind of way. But between you and me, I’d rather be listening to Photek.