Today, everything is gone. The band have packed up, "Daft Club" is defunct and CDs no longer sell. The internet and streaming have swallowed everything and only a few of us are left clinging onto the life raft of physical media. Still, we have the music and the memories.
This is by far my favourite Daft Punk album and the only one I own on vinyl. I bought this double album in 2014 for about twenty pounds from eBay and it seems to be repressed at fairly regular intervals.
There are only two possible scenarios if you haven't come across opening track "One More Time" before. Firstly you could be deaf (and apologies if you are as I am not being facetious) or secondly you have spent the last twenty years living in a vacuum which was under a rock located in a soundproof cave (here I really am being facetious). The second track "Aerodynamic" is simply a series of arpeggios that have no right to be as entertaining as they are. "Digital Love" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" are the archetypal French house grooves that are so catchy they are impossible to resist. The pacing on this album is great as by the time the Linn Drum and disco sample madness of "Crescendolls" has beaten us into submission we are ready to take a break with the laid back vibes of "Nightvision".
The pounding house is resurrected with "Superheroes" which slices up a Barry Manilow song into an annoying mess. A similar mash up recipe is used on "High Life" but it is only perfected with standout "Face To Face". My favourite track is "Voyager" which is slightly less sample driven and sounds like the band actually had a hand in writing the music rather than manipulating an Akai sampler. Elsewhere there are flashbacks to old school house, eighties pop and seventies funk which are all coated in Daft Punk's secret formula. Not a perfect album, but it has been refreshing to go back to real electronic music after listening to so many rock orientated efforts of late. 4/5
