daft punk homework gear list

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Here’s a list of all the gear Daft Punk used to make ‘Homework’

A 1999 Japanese magazine article contains Daft Punk's studio secrets

• Patrick Hinton
• 23 February 2021

When news of Daft Punk’s split was revealed yesterday , the internet lit up with collective mourning and reminiscing over favourites from the robots’ mighty back catalogue.

The French duo’s debut ‘Homework’ remains heralded as one of their best releases , and one of the finest electronic music albums of all time too, featuring classics such as ‘Around The World’, ‘Teachers’ and ‘Da Funk’.

Read this next: The best Daft Punk tracks ranked

If you’ve ever wondered how Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Honem-Christo made the masterpiece, an archival Japanese magazine article from 1999 shared on Reddit holds some of the clues.

It features photos of a pre-robot mask wearing Daft Punk (they were opting for frog and pig masks in this shoot) alongside a list of all the equipment they used to make ‘Homework’.

Among the list are beloved synths and drum machines such Roland’s TB-303, TR-707, TR-808 and TR-909, and less obviously, an IOMEGA floppy disk zip drive. The 90’s!

Read this next: No rules: how Daft Punk's 'Homework' changed dance music forever

There’s also some quotes from Thomas Bangalter discussing their process alongside some handy diagrams.

He says: “In the first step when making music with hardware, it goes through the mixer and the compressor and is recorded on the DAT. After that, effects are put on the sound source before going into the mixer to be recorded. We don’t use the AUX on the mixer.

“The second step is directly putting the sounds from the DAT into the S-760 sampler and editing/cutting the two tracks into however many pieces, like hard disk recording.

“Lastly, we recorded it directly from the S-760 to the DAT. From here we do the rest with the Macintosh.”

Read this next: Unseen Daft Punk concert footage has emerged online

Check out the article (bigger version here ) and a full list of the gear featured below.

- Alesis MMT-8 - Apple Macintosh + EMAGIC MicroLogic

Samplers - AKAI S01 - E-MUE III - E-MU SP-1200 - ENSONIQ ASR-10 - ROLAND S-760

Synthesizers

- ROLAND Juno-106 - ROLAND MC-202 - ROLAND MKS-80 - ROLAND TB-303 - SEQUENTIAL Prophet-VS - Drum Machines - LINN LinnDrum - ROLAND TR-707 - ROLAND TR-808 - ROLAND TR-909

- ALESIS Microverb III - ALESIS 3630 Compressor - BEHRINGER Compressor - BEHRINGER Parametric EQ - ENSONIQ DP/4+ - LEXICON Vortex - LEXICON JamMan - LA Audio Gate/Compressor - WALDORF MiniWorks 4-pole - YAMAHA Digital Delay

Mixers/Recorders

- MACKIE. MS-1202 - MACKIE. CR-1604 - PANASONIC SV-3700

- IOMEGA Zip Drive

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Features Editor, follow him on Twitter

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Studio Equipment 58

Software plugins and vsts 4, headphones 4, keyboards and synthesizers 18, microphones 11, studio monitors 1, modular synthesizers 3, effects pedals 10, amplifiers 2, bass guitars 3, drum sets 1, live setup accessories 2.

Alesis 3630 Dual-Channel Compressor/Limiter with Gate

Effects Processors

From a 2001 interview with Daft Punk: "We have a really small compressor, the Alesis 3630, which is $300. That's the main one we used on Homework and Discovery. The one we used the most is one of the cheapest ones on the market."

Submitted over 10 years ago

Roland Juno-106

Synthesizers

Daft Punk "...brought their own synths into the studio, with a modular synth and things like an Oberheim OB8 and a Juno 106 and quite a few old polyphonic analogue synths."

Ibanez FC10 Fat Cat Distortion

Distortion Effects Pedals

in this picture you can see the fc10 in front of the juno 106

Submitted almost 7 years ago

Mutronics Mutator

Per the official Mutronics website, Daft Punk are listed as Mutator customers. Good of Mutronics to keep the page alive despite the Mutator being discontinued in 2007.

Submitted about 3 years ago

Moog Minimoog Voyager Rack Mount Edition

Sound Modules

Several Moog Voyagers can be seen in photos of Daft Punk's pyramid, i.e. their live gear setup.

E-mu SP-1200

Production & Groove

In this 2001 interview with Daft Punk about Discovery, they list some of their preferred samplers; the 1200 is listed.

Submitted over 8 years ago

Roland S-760

Audio Samplers

In this 2001 interview with Daft Punk about Discovery, they list some of their preferred samplers, the Roland S-760 being on the list.

Ableton Live

DAW Software

In a two-page spread image pulled from Mixmag, Thomas Bangalter says about Daft Punk live shows, "The show revolves around Ableton Live software on custom made super-compute...

Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer

Drum Machines

At 7:26, in this performance video by Daft Punk, one can see the TR-909.

Submitted almost 9 years ago

Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer

In this 2001 interview with Daft Punk about Discovery, their main synths are listed. The 808 and its cousin the 909 are both mentioned.

DigiTech X-Series Bass Synth Wah

Bass Effects Pedals

This isn't proof, but uncanny resemblance. Multiple sources claim Daft Punk used the Digitech Bass Synth Wah the entirety of the album Human After All.

Submitted about 7 years ago

Boss MT-2 Metal Zone

In this article on a Daft Punk fan site, it says that the duo used a Boss MT-2 Guitar Pedal with a Juno 106 synth to create the sounds heard on their song "Rollin' And Scratchin'"

Roland TB-303

Tabletop Synthesizers

This thread contains an old article from technorama that explains all the gear Daft Punk's old live setup, including the TB-303.

Submitted over 7 years ago

Ableton Operator FM Synthesizer Plugin

Synth Plugins

During an interview, Thomas Bangalter mentions his fondness for Ableton's Operator synth:

While Daft Punk record analog synths for thick melodies and lead lines, they're also fans of Ableton's built-in synthesizer. "Operator is one of the best soft synths out there, and I hate soft synths...

Linn Electronics LinnDrum

Daft Punk has a LinnDrum in this image of one of their performances from the 90s.

Mackie CR-1604

this japanese interview shows daft punks equipment used to record homework

Submitted about 5 years ago

Studio Electronics Midimoog

Per this photo dated 23rd of September 1995 and a ...

Roland SVC-350 Vocoder

Used on Discovery , as stated in this May 1, 2001 Remix interview.

You use vocoders and phase shifters on many of your tracks. Bangalter: People always ask us what vocoder we use, but every one of our vocal tracks uses a different vo...

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2.8

According to the spectrasonics website, Daft Punk is known to use Spectrasonics products including Omnisphere.

Submitted about 6 years ago

Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter

Ensoniq DP/4+

Oberheim DMX

You've also broken away from the standard house music instrumentation. For example, you used Oberheim and Linn drum machines on several songs instead of the usual 808 and 909. ...

Linn Electronics Linn 9000

Per this March 2001 interview with Keyboards Magazine (FR) , Daft Punk employed a Linn 9000 during the recording of Discovery .

Valley People Dyna-mite 440

In this enlarged photo from a French music publication you can see the familiar black and silver cosmetic and distinctive font of a Valley People Dyna-mite on the piece of gear 2nd from bottom below the Composer. Full CODA magazine page here: ...

Avid Pro Tools

Daft Punk use Pro Tools to record ideas and demos, which they then take into the studio to record properly. Pro Tools was used during all stages of recording the tracks for Random Access Memories.

Alesis Microverb III

A Microverb III can clearly be seen in this photo of Daft Punk's late-90s live rig - courtesy CODA magzine. Note: the article cites this as a Microverb II, which was half-rack size, but the photo in question clearly shows a rack-sized Microverb III.

Sequential Circuits Prophet-5

Daft Punk's Thomas and Guy-Manuel used the Prophet-5 in early recording sessions for Random Access Memories.

Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifier

Daft Punk record bass guitar via a Neve 1081 and Teletronix LA-2A. The LA-2A was also used to record a couple of vocalists, and during the mixing process it was used for parallel compression on the kick and snare.

Yamaha CS-80

"Thomas and Guy-Man had a bunch of keyboards during these early [recording] sessions, like the [Sequential Circuits] Prophet 5, [Roland] Jupiter 6, Juno 106, Yamaha CS80."

Roland Jupiter-6

Daft Punk use the Jupiter-6 synth in recording sessions.

This is a community-built gear list for Daft Punk.

• Find relevant music gear like studio equipment, software, headphones, DAW & software, plugins, and other instruments and add it to Daft Punk .
• The best places to look for gear usage are typically on the artist's social media, YouTube, live performance images , and interviews.
• To receive email updates when Daft Punk is seen with new gear follow the artist .

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Here’s a list of all the gear Daft Punk used to make ‘Homework’

When news of Daft Punk’s split was revealed yesterday , the internet lit up with collective mourning and reminiscing over favourites from the robots’ mighty back catalogue.

The French duo’s debut ‘Homework’ remains heralded as one of their best releases , and one of the finest electronic music albums of all time too, featuring classics such as ‘Around The World’, ‘Teachers’ and ‘Da Funk’.

Read this next: The best Daft Punk tracks ranked

If you’ve ever wondered how Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Honem-Christo made the masterpiece, an archival Japanese magazine article from 1999 shared on Reddit holds some of the clues.

It features photos of a pre-robot mask wearing Daft Punk (they were opting for frog and pig masks in this shoot) alongside a list of all the equipment they used to make ‘Homework’.

Among the list are beloved synths and drum machines such Roland’s TB-303, TR-707, TR-808 and TR-909, and less obviously, an IOMEGA floppy disk zip drive. The 90’s!

Read this next: No rules: how Daft Punk’s ‘Homework’ changed dance music forever

There’s also some quotes from Thomas Bangalter discussing their process alongside some handy diagrams.

He says: “In the first step when making music with hardware, it goes through the mixer and the compressor and is recorded on the DAT. After that, effects are put on the sound source before going into the mixer to be recorded. We don’t use the AUX on the mixer.

“The second step is directly putting the sounds from the DAT into the S-760 sampler and editing/cutting the two tracks into however many pieces, like hard disk recording.

“Lastly, we recorded it directly from the S-760 to the DAT. From here we do the rest with the Macintosh.”

Read this next: Unseen Daft Punk concert footage has emerged online

Check out the article (bigger version here ) and a full list of the gear featured below.

– Alesis MMT-8 – Apple Macintosh + EMAGIC MicroLogic

– AKAI S01 – E-MUE III – E-MU SP-1200 – ENSONIQ ASR-10 – ROLAND S-760

Synthesizers

– ROLAND Juno-106 – ROLAND MC-202 – ROLAND MKS-80 – ROLAND TB-303 – SEQUENTIAL Prophet-VS – Drum Machines – LINN LinnDrum – ROLAND TR-707 – ROLAND TR-808 – ROLAND TR-909

– ALESIS Microverb III – ALESIS 3630 Compressor – BEHRINGER Compressor – BEHRINGER Parametric EQ – ENSONIQ DP/4+ – LEXICON Vortex – LEXICON JamMan – LA Audio Gate/Compressor – WALDORF MiniWorks 4-pole – YAMAHA Digital Delay

Mixers/Recorders

– MACKIE. MS-1202 – MACKIE. CR-1604 – PANASONIC SV-3700

– IOMEGA Zip Drive

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag’s Digital Features Editor, follow him on Twitter

Read this next: Get the best of Mixmag direct to your Facebook DMs

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Daft Punk's Homework turns 25: discover the gear and production techniques behind the sound

1999 interview confirms a love of Roland gear and an ingenious workflow

Hard to believe, but it's exactly 25 years since Daft Punk released Homework, their seminal debut album. Hugely influential, this was a record that helped to revive house music, and inspired a generation of producers to start talking about 909s and 303s.

5 tracks producers need to hear by... Daft Punk

Which brings us to a rare and revealing interview that the duo gave to a Japanese magazine way back in 1999 , two years after the release of Homework.

In it, the band - Thomas Bangaleter and Guy-Manuel De Homen-Christo - discuss their gear setup and production methods. As you’d expect, they were heavy users of Roland ’s TR drum machines and TB-303 BassLine synth , while sampling was taken care of by models from big-hitters of the time such as Akai and E-MU, with the latter company’s SP1200 a notable studio presence.

Daft Punk’s early love affair with Roland gear, meanwhile (let’s not forget that Homework even goes so far as to feature a track called Revolution 909 ; the drum machine that was allegedly used to create it  went up for sale in 2017 ) is further illustrated by their ownership of a Juno-106 , MC-202 and MKS-80 .

Despite speculation that the lead sound from Da Funk was created using a Korg MS-20, there's no mention of it on this list.

Effects-wise, it comes as no surprise to see the Alesis 3630 on the kit list - this was a staple of F rench touch production at the time - and the same company’s Microverb II is there as well. The duo had further processing hardware from Behringer , LA Audio, Waldorf and Yamaha .

The Secret DJ on why bands split, and why we shouldn't mourn the end of Daft Punk

When it came to recording, Thomas Bangaleter explained that sounds were sent through their mixer (a Mackie MS1202) and compressor to the DAT machine (a Panasonic SV-3700), with MIDI sequencing being taken care of by a Mac running Emagic’s MicroLogic (a pre- Apple , entry-level version of Logic that was available at the time).  

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Following some effects processing, sounds from the DAT were then sent to a Roland S-760 sampler to be spliced up, before these bits and pieces were sequenced from the Mac and finished tracks recorded back to the DAT.

It’s all a world away from the joined-up, in-the-box music production world we live in today; Daft Punk were still using zip drives back then, a very ‘90s storage solution. However, many would argue that the relatively primitive nature of their setup was what gave their early music its charm, and that, as technology has given us more creative options, something else has been lost.

Further reading

If you want to dig a little deeper into the Daft Punk Homework synth sound, check out Reverb Machine's excellent article , which features superb remakes of Da Funk and Around The World, all created in software. 

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it. 

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Daft Punk’s gear list for their 1997 album Homework has surfaced online

Find out which synth made that classic Da Funk lead line.

Image: daftbootlegs.weebly.com

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After Daft Punk announced they were hanging up their helmets , tributes poured in from fans and collaborators. They shared old footage , classic songs and insightful interviews – including a particularly interesting feature in a Japanese magazine from 1999, which revealed the gear used on Homework .

The article saw Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Honem-Christo share their complete studio gear list in the creation of 1997’s Homework . The duo also shared their signal path and production techniques.

Despite speculation that the iconic Da Funk lead sound was made on the Korg MS-20, it appears to not be part of their arsenal at this time. Instead, Daft Punk had a Roland Juno-106, MC-202, MKS-80, TB-303 and a Sequential Prophet-VS, along with a host of effects.

Along with those classic synths, the duo also produced with a Roland TR-707, TR-808 , TR-909 – which is, obviously, the inspiration for the track Revolution 909 – an E-Mu SP-1200 and much more. Less obvious is the use of some 90s Behringer gear and an Iomega floppy disk drive. It goes to show what kind of influential music you can make with affordable gear.

In the interview, Bangalter says: “In the first step, when making music with hardware, [the signal] goes through the mixer and the compressor and is recorded on the DAT. After that, effects are put on the sound source before going into the mixer to be recorded. We don’t use the AUX on the mixer.”

“The second step is directly putting the sounds from the DAT into the S-760 sampler and editing/cutting the two tracks into however many pieces, like hard disk recording.

“Lastly, we recorded it directly from the S-760 to the DAT. From here we do the rest with the Macintosh.”

Check out the equipment list below.

– Alesis MMT-8 – Apple Macintosh + EMAGIC MicroLogic

– AKAI S01 – E-Mu E III – E-Mu SP-1200 – Ensoniq ASR-10 – Roland S-760

Synthesizers

– Roland Juno-106 – Roland MC-202 – Roland MKS-80 – Roland TB-303 – Sequential Prophet-VS – Drum Machines – Linn LinnDrum – Roland TR-707 – Roland TR-808 – Roland TR-909

– Alesis Microverb III – Alesis 3630 Compressor – Behringer Compressor – Behringer Parametric EQ – Ensoniq DP/4+ – Lexicon Vortex – Lexicon JamMan – LA Audio Gate/Compressor – Waldorf MiniWorks 4-pole – Yamaha Digital Delay

Mixers/Recorders

– Mackie. MS-1202 – Mackie. CR-1604 – Panasonic SV-3700

– Iomega Zip Drive

Check out the full-size feature here .

For more music tech news, click here .

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A Japanese magazine article from 1999 contains Daft Punk's studio secrets

Here’s a list of all the gear Daft Punk used to make ‘Homework’

• Patrick Hinton
• 24 February 2021

When news of Daft Punk’s split was revealed yesterday , the internet lit up with collective mourning and reminiscing over favourites from the robots’ mighty back catalogue.

The French duo’s debut ‘Homework’ remains heralded as one of their best releases , and one of the finest electronic music albums of all time too, featuring classics such as ‘Around The World’, ‘Teachers’ and ‘Da Funk’.

If you’ve ever wondered how Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Honem-Christo made the masterpiece, an archival Japanese magazine article from 1999 shared on Reddit holds some of the clues.

It features photos of a pre-robot mask wearing Daft Punk (they were opting for frog and pig masks in this shoot) alongside a list of all the equipment they used to make ‘Homework’.

Among the list are beloved synths and drum machines such Roland’s TB-303, TR-707, TR-808 and TR-909, and less obviously, an IOMEGA floppy disk zip drive. The 90’s!

There are also some quotes from Thomas Bangalter discussing their process alongside some handy diagrams.

He says: “In the first step when making music with hardware, it goes through the mixer and the compressor and is recorded on the DAT. After that, effects are put on the sound source before going into the mixer to be recorded. We don’t use the AUX on the mixer.

“The second step is directly putting the sounds from the DAT into the S-760 sampler and editing/cutting the two tracks into however many pieces, like hard disk recording.

“Lastly, we recorded it directly from the S-760 to the DAT. From here we do the rest with the Macintosh.”

Check out the article (bigger version here ) and a full list of the gear featured below.

- Alesis MMT-8 - Apple Macintosh + EMAGIC MicroLogic

Samplers - AKAI S01 - E-MUE III - E-MU SP-1200 - ENSONIQ ASR-10 - ROLAND S-760

Synthesizers

- ROLAND Juno-106 - ROLAND MC-202 - ROLAND MKS-80 - ROLAND TB-303 - SEQUENTIAL Prophet-VS - Drum Machines - LINN LinnDrum - ROLAND TR-707 - ROLAND TR-808 - ROLAND TR-909

- ALESIS Microverb III - ALESIS 3630 Compressor - BEHRINGER Compressor - BEHRINGER Parametric EQ - ENSONIQ DP/4+ - LEXICON Vortex - LEXICON JamMan - LA Audio Gate/Compressor - WALDORF MiniWorks 4-pole - YAMAHA Digital Delay

Mixers/Recorders

- MACKIE. MS-1202 - MACKIE. CR-1604 - PANASONIC SV-3700

- IOMEGA Zip Drive

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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.

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