homework daft punk review

Find anything you save across the site in your account

By Larry Fitzmaurice

December 2, 2018

Daft Punk ’s Homework is, in its pure existence, a study in contradictions. The debut album from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo arrived in 1997, right around the proliferation of big-beat and electronica—a twin-headed hydra of dance music fads embraced by the music industry following the commercialization of early ’90s rave culture—but when it came to presumptive contemporaries from those pseudo-movements, Homework shared Sam Goody rack space and not much else. Daft Punk’s introduction to the greater world also came at a time when French electronic music was gaining international recognition, from sturdy discotheque designs to jazzy, downtempo excursions—music that sounded miles away from Homework ’s rude, brutalist house music.

In the 21 years since Homework ’s release, Daft Punk have strayed far from its sound with globe-traversing electronic pop that, even while incorporating other elements of dance music subgenres, has more often than not kept house music’s building blocks at arms’ length. 2001’s Discovery was effectively electronic pop-as-Crayola box, with loads of chunky color and front-and-center vocals that carried massive mainstream appeal. Human After All from 2005 favored dirty guitars and repetitive, Teutonic sloganeering, while the pair took a nostalgia trip through the history of electronic pop itself for 2013’s Random Access Memories . Were it not for a few choice Homework tracks that pop up on 2007’s exhilarating live document Alive 2007 , one might assume that Homework has been lost in the narrative that’s formed since its release—that of Daft Punk as robot-helmeted superstar avatars, rather than as irreverent house savants.

But even as the straightforward and strident club fare on Homework remains singular within Daft Punk’s catalog, the record also set the stage for the duo’s career to this very day—a massively successful and still-going ascent to pop iconography, built on the magic trick-esque ability to twist the shapes of dance music’s past to resemble something seemingly futuristic. Whether you’re talking about Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s predilection for global-kitsch nostalgia, their canny and self-possessed sense of business savvy, or their willingness to wear their influences on their sleeve like ironed-on jean-jacket patches—it all began with Homework .

It couldn’t possibly make more sense that a pair of musicians whose most recent album sounds like a theme park ride through pop and electronic music’s past got their big break at Disneyland. It was 1993, and schoolboy friends Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s rock band with future Phoenix guitarist Laurent Brancowitz, Darlin’—named after a track from the 1967 Beach Boys album Wild Honey that the three shared an affinity for—had disbanded after a year of existence that included a few songs released on Stereolab ’s Duophonic label. (Melody Maker writer Dave Jennings notoriously referred to their songs as possessing “a daft punky thrash,” which led to the pair assuming the Daft Punk moniker.)

While attending a rave in Paris, Bangalter and Homem-Christo had a chance encounter with Glasgow DJ/producer Stuart McMillan, the co-founder of the Soma Recordings dance label; like any aspiring musicians would, they gave him a demo tape of early Daft Punk music. The following year Soma released Daft Punk’s debut single “The New Wave,” a booming and acid-tinged instrumental that would later evolve into Homework cut “Alive.”

A follow-up, “Da Funk” b/w “Rollin’ & Scratchin’,” hit shops in 1995; according to a Muzik profile two years later, its initial 2,000-platter pressing was “virtually ignored” until rave-electronica bridge-gap veterans the Chemical Brothers started airing out its A-side during DJ sets. A major-label bidding war ensued, with Virgin as the victor which re-released “Da Funk” as a proper single in 1996 with non- Homework track “Musique” as its B-side. During this time, Bangalter and Homem-Christo casually worked on the 16 tunes that would make up Homework in the former’s bedroom, utilizing what The Guardian ’s Ben Osborne referred to in 2001 as “ low technology equipment ”—two sequencers, a smattering of samplers, synths, drum machines, and effects, with an IOMEGA zip drive rounding out their setup.

Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s work ethic while assembling the bulk of Homework was of the type that makes sloths appear highly efficient by comparison: no more than eight hours a week, over the course of five months. “We have not spent much time on Homework ,” Bangalter casually bragged to POP . “The main thing is that it sounds good… We have no need to make music every day.” The songs were crafted with the intention of being released as singles (“We do not really want to make albums,” Bangalter claimed in the same interview), Homework ’s eventual sequencing a literal afterthought after the pair realized they had enough material to evenly fill four sides of two vinyl platters. “Balance,” the pair said in unison when asked about Homework ’s format-specific sequencing in Dance Music Authority following the album’s release. “It is done for balance.”

Indeed, Homework is practically built to be consumed in side-long chunks; taking the album in at a single 75-minute listen can feel like running a 5K right after eating an entire pizza. Its A-side kicks off with the patient build of “Daftendirekt”—itself a live-recording excerpt of introductory music used during a Daft Punk set at 1995’s I Love Techno festival in Ghent—and concludes with the euphoric uplift of “Phoenix”; the B-side opens with the literal oceanic washes of “Fresh” before stretching its legs with the loopy, Gershon Kingsley-interpolating “Around the World” and the screeching fist-pump anthem “Rollin’ & Scratchin’.” The third side keeps things light with the flashy, instructional “Teachers” before getting truly twisted on “Rock’n Roll,” and the fourth side takes a few rubbery detours before landing on the full-bodied “Alive”—the thicker and meaner final form of “The New Wave”—and, quixotically, a slight and rewound “Da Funk” return, aptly titled “Funk Ad.”

Bangalter explained to POP that the title of Homework carries a few meanings: “You always do homework in the bedroom,” he stated, referencing the album’s homespun origins before elaborating on the didactic exercise that creating the album represented: “We see it as a training for our upcoming discs. We would as well have been able to call it Lesson or Learning .” That instructional nature is reflexive when it comes to listeners’ presumptive relationship with the album, as Homework practically represents a how-to for understanding and listening to house music.

Nearly every track opens with a single sonic element—more often than not, that steady 4/4 rhythm inextricably tied to house music—adding every successive element of the track patiently, like a played-in-reverse YouTube video showcasing someone taking apart a gadget to see what’s inside. Such a pedagogic approach can have its pitfalls; there’s always a risk of coming across as too rigid, and Daft Punk arguably fell victim to such dull, fussy didacticism later in their careers. But they sidestep such follies on Homework by way of the purely pleasurable music they carefully assembled, piece-by-piece, for whoever was listening.

Under the umbrella of house music, Homework incorporates a variety of sounds snatched from various musical subgenres—G-funk’s pleasing whine, the cut-up vocal-sample style of proto-UK garage made popular by frequent Daft Punk collaborator Todd Edwards , disco’s delicious synths and glittery sweep—to craft a true musical travelogue that also hinted at the widescreen sonic scope they’d take later in their careers. Above all, the album represents a love letter to black American pop music that’s reverberated through Daft Punk’s career to date—from Janet Jackson ’s sample of “Daftendirekt” on her 2008 Discipline track “So Much Betta” to Will.i.am’s failed attempt to remix “Around the World” the year previous, as well as the duo’s continued collaborations with artists ranging from Pharrell to Kanye West and the Weeknd .

The spirit of house music’s Midwestern originators is also literally and musically invoked throughout. Over the winding house-party groove of “Teachers,” Daft Punk pay homage to their formative influences, ranging from George Clinton and Dr. Dre to Black house and techno pioneers like Lil Louis, DJ Slugo, and Parris Mitchell—and in a meta twist, the song’s structure itself is a literal homage to Mitchell’s 1995 Dance Mania! single “Ghetto Shout Out,” an interpolation clearly telegraphed in the middle of Daft Punk’s astounding contribution to BBC’s Essential Mix series in 1997 .

Alongside Daft Punk’s preoccupations with American popular music, Homework also carries a very specific and politically pointed evocation of their native Paris in “Revolution 909,” the fourth and final single released from Homework that doubled as a critique of anti-rave measures taken by the French government after Jacques Chirac assumed power in 1995. “I don’t think it’s the music they’re after—it’s the parties,” Homem-Christo told Dance Music Authority , with Bangalter adding, “They pretend [the issue is] drugs, but I don’t think it’s the only thing. There’s drugs everywhere, but they probably wouldn’t have a problem if the same thing was going on at a rock concert, because that’s what they understand. They don’t understand this music which is really violent and repetitive, which is house; they consider it dumb and stupid.”

“Revolution 909” opens with ambient club noise, followed by the intrusion of police sirens and intimidating megaphone’d orders to “stop the music and go home.” The accompanying Roman Coppola-helmed music video was even more explicit in depicting the frequent clash between ravers and law enforcement that marked dance music’s rise to the mainstream in the early-to-mid-’90s; amidst a kitschy instructional video on making tomato sauce, a pair of cops attempt to disperse a rave, a young woman escaping one of their grasps after he becomes distracted by a tomato sauce stain on his own lapel.

It’s been rumored, but never quite confirmed, that Bangalter himself appears in the video for “Revolution 909”—a slice of speculation gesturing towards the fact that Daft Punk’s Homework era was the time in which the duo began embracing anonymity. The now-iconic robot helmets wouldn’t be conceived of until the Discovery era, and the magazine stories that came during Daft Punk’s pre- Homework days were typically accompanied by a fresh-faced photo of the pair; during Homework ’s promotional cycle, however, they donned a variety of masks to obscure their visages, including frog and pig-themed disguises .

In conversation with Simon Reynolds for The New York Times in 2013, the pair cited Brian De Palma’s glam-rock masterpiece Phantom of the Paradise as artistic inspiration for their decision to retain visual anonymity, and Daft Punk’s press-shy tendencies (since Homework , the interviews they’ve chosen to take part in have been few and far between) are firmly situated in a long tradition of letting the music do the talking in dance culture—from the sci-fi evasiveness of Drexciya and Aphex Twin ’s relative reclusiveness to the preferred reticence of Burial and his contemporaries in the UK bass scene.

But refusing to turn themselves into rock stars upon Homework ’s release also afforded Daft Punk a crucial element that has undoubtedly aided their perpetual ascent to the present-day: control. Retaining a sense of anonymity was but one of the conditions that the pair struck with Virgin upon signing to the label before Homework ’s release; while the music they released under the label (before signing to Columbia in 2013) was licensed exclusively to Virgin, they owned it through their own Daft Trax production and management company.

But Homework proved influential in other, more explicitly musical ways. G-house, an emergent dance subgenre in the mid-2010s dominated by acts like French duo Amine Edge & Dance, borrows liberally from Daft Punk’s own musical mash of hip-hop’s tough sounds and house music’s pounding appeal; the dirty bloghouse bruisers of Parisian collective Ed Banger—founded by Pedro Winter aka Busy P, who acted as the group’s manager until 2008—would literally not exist were it not for Homework , and that goes double for the party-hardy bloghouse micro-movement of the mid-late 2000s, which Ed Banger’s artists practically dominated. Parisian duo Justice , in particular, owe practically the entirety of their 2007 landmark † to the scraping tension of “Rollin’ & Scratchin’.”

It’s tempting, too, to tie a connective thread between Homework and the brash sounds that proliferated during the peak heyday of the financial descriptor-cum-music genre known as EDM; close your eyes while listening to “Alive”’s big-tent sweep and try not to imagine the tune destroying a festival crowd. But for all of Homework ’s aggressive charms, it’s also retained a homespun intimacy in comparison to how positively widescreen Daft Punk’s music became afterwards. “We focus on the illusion because giving away how it’s done instantly shuts down the sense of excitement and innocence,” Bangalter told Pitchfork in 2013, and the fact that two Beach Boys fans fiddling around in their bedroom could conceive of something so generously in-your-face and playful as Homework might still stand as Daft Punk’s greatest illusion yet.

All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Pitchfork. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Enter your email below to be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Yes, I want to receive marketing messages with the latest news, events and releases from Dig!. I understand that these emails are based on my information, interests, website activities and device data that is handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

By submitting my information, I agree to receive personalized updates and marketing messages about WMX based on my information, interests, activities, website visits and device data and in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

Homework: How Daft Punk Schooled Us In The Future Of Dance Music

With their debut album, ‘Homework’, Daft Punk cemented their place in history, even while shaping what that history would become.

There are those who ride the waves of a scene, and there are those who create a new scene in the first place. Daft Punk have always been the latter, particularly in the formative years surrounding their debut album, Homework .

Listen to Homework here

Scrappy, raw and experimental.

Few musical acts have changed so much between albums as Daft Punk did in the four years between the release of Homework , on 20 January 1997, and its follow-up, Discovery . Reinvention is often the key to longevity in music, but it usually comes after years of exhausting the same tried and tested formula. For Daft Punk, however, their first two albums feel like the works of entirely different artists: meticulously detailed and polished, Discovery was stuffed with instant classics that aimed for the big leagues. Homework , however, represents everything that’s exciting about the best debut albums: scrappy, raw and experimental, it perfectly captured the spirit of Daft Punk’s live sets in their early years, with tracks mixing into each other perfectly, building and maintaining energy as if tooled for a club appearance.

Video footage from a live show in Wisconsin, in 1996, demonstrates this perfectly. Claiming to be the earliest evidence of Daft Punk on stage, there isn’t a mirror ball or robot mask in sight. Aesthetically, it could be any boiler-room gig – a small audience going wild as Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo rip through their set with absolute conviction. Sonically, it’s a wild ride: the beat is the only constant; everything else can be thrown in and pulled away again in an instant. Tracks like Homework ’s Rock’n Roll, with its pulsating scratch loop, brought the excitement of these shows to listeners’ stereos.

Hints of the Daft Punk to come

However, Homework isn’t just a recorded version of an early gig. Across its 75 minutes, there are plenty of hints of the Daft Punk to come, particularly with the standout hits Alive, Da Funk and Around The World. The ambition alone of these early singles was enough to change the dance music scene at the time, pushing house back into the mainstream.

Recorded on the cheap at home (a process that gave the album its title), Homework wasn’t truly intended to be an album: the singles are placed between the more experimental tracks in an attempt to form something that felt more traditionally cohesive. Even so, it’s clear there were two very difference sides to Daft Punk, even in these early stages.

Few artists could produce their debut album at home while ensuring it sounded perfect wherever it was played, but, channelling huge amounts of energy and live experience for the recording, Bangalter and De Homem-Christo already knew what would work and what wouldn’t on their limited set-up. It’s this adaptability that made Daft Punk’s journey from club act to festival headliners a smooth one. But while it’s one thing to make an album at home, it’s an entirely other thing to have it cement your place in musical history.

Here are some of the standout tracks that make Homework a lesson in the evolution of dance music…

Homework : the tracks you need to hear

Revolution 909.

There’s a drum sound so industrial it could have been recorded in a factory, landing with such a satisfying clang that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Revolution 909 sits perfectly as one of Homework ’s opening tracks, setting the energy for the rest of the album and leading flawlessly into Da Funk…

… Which is not only a highlight on Homework , it’s a highlight of Daft Punk’s entire career. When a band discovers a truly great riff, they strip down everything else and squeeze every last drop out of it. Da Funk is one of those: instant, direct, and memorable – everything you want from a house track. Also, shout-out to the music video by the masterful Spike Jonze, in which a dog with its leg in a cast gets treated with complete indifference by a load of strangers.

Nothing sums up the early Daft Punk sound quite like Phoenix. Though subtler than some of the Homework ’s later tracks, it’s fully earned its place amongst the group’s bigger hitters.

Around The World

What more is there to say that hasn’t already been said? Around The World remains a juggernaut in dance music. Every part has been tightened to perfection, making it the perfect instrumental for the duo to introduce their trademark robot voice on.

With a twitching bassline that props up an ever-growing beat, Burnin’ is surrounded by all kinds of pops, scratches, slides and squeaks. If Homework builds in intensity as a live set would, this is the peak of that experience.

One of the original singles dropped ahead of Homework’s release, Alive still sounds as huge as ever. There’s a reason they name their tours after this song…

Check out the best Daft Punk song of all time to discover how they got harder, better, faster, stronger.

• Album Stories

More Like This

When Doves Cry Facts: 10 Things You Need To Know About Prince’s Seminal Pop Masterpiece

Prince’s hit ‘Purple Rain’ song When Doves Cry changed the game in the 80s. These ten facts reveal exactly why that was.

‘Ghost Stories’: How Chris Martin Bore His Soul On Coldplay’s Haunting Sixth Album

Grieving the end of his marriage, Chris Martin moved beyond heartbreak to find hope on Coldplay’s sixth album, ‘Ghost Stories’.

Be the first to know

Stay up-to-date with the latest music news, new releases, special offers and other discounts!

Yes, I want to receive marketing messages with the latest news, events and releases from Dig!. I understand that these messages are based on my information, interests, website activities and device data that is handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

Sign up to our newsletter

Be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

STREAM OR BUY:

Release Date

Recording location, discography timeline, allmusic review, user reviews, track listing, similar albums, moods and themes.

Daft Punk : Homework

It’s hard to believe a world existed where Daft Punk didn’t but so it did once, or so they tell me. I’m imagining dance floors with the hard sheen of mausoleums but maybe that’s because before Daft Punk we didn’t dance. We wriggled. Which sounds like a Chuck Norris joke but isn’t. No joke: Daft Punk’s Homework stitched together the seams of Krautrock, trash disco, and unclean fun to make a modern groovemonster, pallid complexion and all. And he who does not dance, does not eat. Which sounds like a John Smith joke but isn’t.

You could start a party without the first twenty seconds of “Da Funk” but I wouldn’t recommend it. Ask James Murphy. As one of the many modern beneficiaries of Daft Punk’s liturgy, the LCD Soundsystem architect built more than a shrine with “ Daft Punk Is Playing At My House “—he knew above all that chicks can’t resist them. In recent years Daft Punk has been experiencing a renaissance of sorts thanks to all the hipsterati who think they can dance. Getting chummy with Kanye West didn’t hurt. To some extent, as is often the (unfortunate) case, they’ve been redeemed in the public eye by a series of lesser acts. But Homework is where it all started and in its jagged-glass realpolitik and gleaming jungle of beats real and imagined it beats the tight pants off all the post-IDM competition.

Working a formula they’d perfect a few years later on Discovery , Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter spend much of Homework applying the rigor of careful pop-tuneage to the refined recklessness of the club. “Around The World,” way before “What Goes Around/Comes Around” would be superimposed on it for, admittedly, the mashup to fuck ALL mashups, was a shamelessly beatcentric bid for Top 40 pleasure. They just didn’t tell anybody. The midgear tracks like “Indo Silver Club” and “Fresh” deflect dirigible-sized hooks with squalls of process and studio finickry. Then there’s the rockers: “Revolution 909” complete with piped-in crowd noise that sounds like the start of an accident, and the skewed, seven-minute-long “Rollin’ & Scratchin” which pretty much predicts the Justice record in its entirety and would die before it lets up. That’s right, they’re rockers.

Amid the mad dice of samples and breakmaking, much about Daft Punk’s methodology remains impervious to scrutiny, even by gearheads. It’s the masks and the mystique more than anything that constitute most of the awe despite the fact that every badass DJ and electro nihilist owes them something. Ultimately Homework is such a minimal record it’s almost frustrating in the sense that any go you have at parsing it ends in overreaching. All the songs are killer at their own level and how they got there is anybody’s guess. To quote “Angels In America,” this is not sophistry. This is reality. This is Homework .

Hear Orcas’ gorgeously gloomy dream pop song “Riptide”

Treble 100: No. 17, DJ Shadow – Endtroducing…

Darkside announce fall UK/European tour

Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance announce collaborative album, Jinxed by Being

Ibibio Sound Machine : Pull the Rope

Efterklang announce new album, Things We Have In Common

• Album Reviews
• City Guides

© 2024 Treble Media. All Rights Reserved.

• Album review
• arts and culture
• Film Review
• Blogs and Lifestyle
• entertainment
• Festival Feature
• In The Middle
• Lifestyle & Culture
• Leeds Internation Film Festival
• Live review
• Anniversary
• Single Review
• Music Features
• Musical Theatre
• Online Exclusive
• Street Style
• Uncategorized

Daft Punk – Homework (25th Anniversary Edition Review)

Released as a surprise drop one year to the day since the duo announced their separation, the 25th Anniversary edition of Daft Punk’s debut album Homework , reintroduces audiences to the duo’s early work which kickstarted their critically acclaimed and award-winning discography.

While those more familiar with Daft Punk’s funk and disco based music from Random Access Memories as well as recent collaborations with The Weeknd with ‘Starboy’ and ‘I Feel It Coming’, Homework brings harder hitting electronic music which helped push French House and electronic music into the mainstream inspiring later artists such as Justice, Disclosure and Porter Robinson amongst many others.

The House classic, ‘Around The World’, is certainly the biggest single from this album and still remains on rotation for many 25 years later, however, relistening to Homework, gives opportunity to re-appreciate some of Daft Punk’s lesser known and underrated tracks. Tracks such as ‘Phoenix’ with its thumping kick and humming beat as well as ‘Indo Silver Club’ with its bouncing drum beat and melody, are both underrated upbeat and joyfully addictive house tracks.

Harder and more techno inspired tracks such as ‘Rollin’ & Scratchin’ and ‘Rock’n Roll’, illustrate the eclectic ability of Daft Punk to make both hard hitting techno and funk and disco inspired house. Those harder hitting tracks however may not be the tracks listeners have on repeat for casual listening, rather playing a much stronger role within Daft Punk’s highly recommended live albums, Alive 1997 and Alive 2007 .

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the original release of Homework, an additional fifteen remixes of songs from the original album have been added to this release. Some of those are fresh unheard remix such as Master at Works’ low tempo and relaxing ‘Around The World – Mellow Mix’, while others are releases of deeper cut remixes which accompanied the original single releases of tracks such as ‘Burnin- Ian Pooley Cut up Mix’ and ‘Revolution 909- Roger Sanchez & Junior Sanchez Remix’. While these remixes are a welcome addition for Daft Punk fans, with eight of the fifteen being remixes of ‘Around the World’ and four being remixes of ‘Burnin’, the 25th Anniversary feels like a missed opportunity. Including  early limited released material such as the Soma Records published singles, ‘Assault’, which was released in the lead up to Homework, and the unreleased 1994 single ‘Drive’ would give listeners music previously unavailable on streaming services, and make the album a must listen.

The release was accompanied by a twitch stream of 1997 Concert from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles from Daft Punk’s Daftendirektour as well as a vinyl reissue of the live album, Alive 1997 . For those new to Daft Punk’s older work, this new 25th Anniversary  release of Homework certainly worth their time. For Daft Punk fans who are very familiar with Homework , their time would perhaps be better spent relistening to Alive 1997 or seeking out other recordings of Daft Punk’s live concerts.

Homework remains a strong release that should  be regarded as highly as Daft Punk’s later albums, Discovery, Human After All and Random Access Memories . The vinyl release of  this 25th Anniversary edition, coming on the 15th April will be a worthwhile collectors item for Daft Punk fans as it compiles alternative versions of classics that could previously only be available within the now hard to find single releases. The re-release is available for streaming now and is a classic album worth revisiting for any dance and electronic music fans.

Ben Stewart

contributor

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Opportunities

Internal links, external links.

Daft Punk — Homework

On February 22 of 2021, a major musical rupture occurred: Daft Punk, the mythic French house duo, through an “Epilogue” video casually posted to their YouTube page, announced their separation. “1993–2021” read the title card, instilling a sense of finality to the break-up that could at least provide some closure — and yet, it was a conscious uncoupling that wasn’t exactly unexpected, at least to attentive listeners. It had been almost a decade since the duo last recorded an album, with zero word of mouth on a follow-up project during the lengthy interim. After setting something of a touring precedent 25 years earlier with their Daftendirektour in 1997 and Alive 2006/2007 — the latter of which produced an iconic, career-spanning mash-up set whose material became its own album — they chose to outright skip performing for all of 2017, dashing any remaining hope for new music on the horizon. Their last prominent artistic contributions were being featured on (and producing) The Weeknd’s two highest-charting singles on Starboy , which was maybe not-so-coincidentally right around the time the two had achieved their highest levels of commercial success. Suffice to say, neither have seemed terribly keen on the prospect of recording under the Daft Punk banner for some time now; the likelihood of a reunion is, at this time, slim to none. But as that title card points out, the Frenchmen pair of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter were together for an impressive 28 years, a period of time in which they managed to become international pop icons and critical darlings in one fell swoop.

But before they became household names (the group, not those long-ass given ones), before they made songs with Pharell Williams and were sampled by Kanye West, before they were even robots — they adopted those monikers for Discovery — they were just two kids who met at secondary school and stumbled into a punk rock band (with Laurent Brancowitz, who became the lead guitarist for Phoenix shortly after) before deciding, after a few nights out at the club, they loved drum machines and Roland synthesizers. When they secured a distribution deal through Virgin Records based on only two singles — largely thanks to The Chemical Brothers pushing them during their DJ sets — they still owned their own masters, allowing them to essentially operate as independent artists while still having a powerful worldwide conglomerate working in their favor to push records. With no major label interference where it mattered creatively, the two tinkered in their bedrooms and got to work. They weren’t even given a strict deadline for their debut album; the original plan was to release a string of solo tracks, and it was only after completion that Bangalter and Homem-Christo realized they had enough material to fill both sides of a double LP.

This period and method of work would result in Homework , an album that, as such, is best experienced not as an album; that is, it’s an album that works best when taken on a song-by-song basis, in morsels and smidgens. So then a bunch of singles? Yes and no, the latter mainly because you need the entire album for said singles. There are a lot of solid singles, a few great ones; many of which function best independently from one another, as their own internal structures are often more compelling than what they contribute in a broader sense. The way a track like “Around the World” — whose bass line has the same chord progression of “Get Lucky,” but in a different key — works around its instrumental variations and chainlink vocal patterns in much the same way a structural film like Michael Snow’s Wavelength derives much of its own power: as a document continuously building upon itself. Once you stack a few of these grand moments up against one another, it creates friction. This makes the experience of listening to Homework in one entire go a bit much, where you start to notice how much the aggressive “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” and “Rock ‘N Roll” sorta sound alike and have similar movements— or how there are two different intro tracks to pad out the length — even when both provide some of the most exhilarating highs across the hour-plus length.

That said, there’s often a refreshing playfulness to the compositional candor of Homework that Daft Punk eventually abandoned for more extravagant electronic offerings, a spunky, youthful sort of merriment that could only organically manifest on a debut album. They’re often uncomplicated, minimalist songs in terms of structure: they introduce all major musical elements early on, with repeating permutations and re-samplings providing the basic framework. The recording setup the two utilized for this project was equally spartan, bare-bones to a degree that’s, according to Bangalter, fitting with its title: this was homework for these plucky Parisian schoolboys, completed at a desk and treated as such.

Part of  Kicking the Canon – The Album Canon .

• by Paul Attard
• Kicking the Canon

You Might Also Like...

Akilla’s Escape | Charles Officer

What Josiah Saw — Vincent Grashaw

The Book of Solutions — Michel Gondry

Raekwon — Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II

Last Summer — Catherine Breillat [Cannes ’23 Review]

Young Thug | Punk

(C) Copyright 2019 - Solo Pine Designs. All Rights Reserved. Designed & Developed by Solo Pine . | Privacy Policy

Privacy Overview

Tame Impala Frontman Kevin Parker Sells Entire Song Catalog, Including Work With Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Others, to Sony Music Publishing

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

• Spotify Hit With Copyright-Violation Claims by Music Publishers; Streaming Giant Calls Allegations ‘False and Misleading’ 20 hours ago
• Tame Impala Frontman Kevin Parker Sells Entire Song Catalog, Including Work With Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Others, to Sony Music Publishing 21 hours ago
• How Amy Allen Dropped Out of Nursing School, Moved to L.A. and Quickly Became the Hit Songwriter Behind ‘Espresso,’ ‘Greedy,’ ‘Without Me’ and More 2 days ago

Sony Music Publishing today announced it has acquired the catalog of Tame Impala singer/ songwriter/ producer Kevin Parker , who has also worked extensively with Dua Lipa, Rihanna, SZA, Kendrick Lamar Gorillaz and more. The deal, which expands the company’s 15-year partnership with Parker, encompasses his entire catalog of songs as well as future works. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Popular on Variety

Parker said of the deal, “The idea of passing on ownership of my songs is one that I don’t think about very lightly, at all. They are the fruit of my blood, sweat and creativity over all the years I’ve been a recording artist and songwriter so far. I have a lot of love and trust for the Sony publishing family and have only had great experiences with Damian Trotter and the rest of the gang worldwide. I don’t think my songs could be in any safer hands than Sony’s, and I’m excited for the future and happy I can keep working with them on whatever the future brings…”

Trotter, managing director of Sony Music Publishing Australia, said, “Kevin is a singular talent whose creativity and dedication to his art has enthralled fans and artists since he arrived on the music scene. Having worked with Kevin since before the release of the first Tame Impala album, it has been thrilling to witness his rise to success worldwide, which is so well deserved. We are proud and humbled to be taking custodianship of this iconic catalogue of songs and to be continuing our relationship with Kevin in this exciting phase of his music making career.”



More From Our Brands

Watch kelly clarkson perform ‘say it ain’t so’ with weezer  , gulfstream is finally delivering the g700 jet, nfl playoff rematches, christmas games highlight 2024 schedule, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, chicago fire says an emotional goodbye to boden in finale promo, verify it's you, please log in.