Discovery is the second studio album by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk, released on 12 March 2001 by Virgin Records. It moved from the Chicago house of their first album, Homework (1997), to a house style inspired by disco, post-disco, garage house, and R&B. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk described Discovery as an exploration of song structures, musical forms, and childhood nostalgia, compared to the "raw" electronic music of Homework.
Discovery was recorded at Bangalter's home in Paris between 1998 and 2000. It features extensive sampling; some samples are from older records, while others were created by Daft Punk. The electronic musicians Romanthony, Todd Edwards, and DJ Sneak collaborated on some tracks. For the music videos, Daft Punk developed a concept that merged science fiction with the entertainment industry. Inspired by their childhood love for Japanese anime, the duo collaborated with Leiji Matsumoto to produce Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, an anime film with Discovery as the soundtrack.
Before Discoverys release, Daft Punk adopted robot costumes. They also launched Daft Club, a website featuring exclusive tracks and bonus material. Discovery peaked high on several international charts upon release. Critics praised Daft Punk for innovating in house music as they had done with Homework. The album produced six singles: "One More Time" was the most successful, becoming a club hit.
Discovery has been named one of the greatest albums and is credited with influencing electronic and pop production in subsequent decades. In 2020, Rolling Stone included it at number 236 in its updated list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Background and recording After their debut album, Homework, was released, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo spent most of 1997 touring on the Daftendirektour. For the first half of 1998, the duo were focused on their own personal labels while also working on the video collection D.A.F.T.: A Story About Dogs, Androids, Firemen and Tomatoes. In 1999 and 2000, their time was split between making music for their own labels and recording Discovery. Bangalter noted that Homework influenced many other artists to mimic its sound, prompting Daft Punk to pursue a different direction to better distinguish themselves.
Daft Punk recorded Discovery in their studio, Daft House, in Bangalter's home in Paris.Discovery (liner notes). Daft Punk. Virgin Records, a division of Universal Music Group. 2001. Work started in 1998 and lasted two years. Bangalter and Homem-Christo made music together and separately, in a similar process to Homework. Rather than rely on the drum machines typical for house music, the Roland TR-808 and the TR-909, Daft Punk used an Oberheim DMX, a LinnDrum and a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks. They used samplers including the Akai MPC and E-mu SP-1200, Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, vocoders including a Roland SVC-350 and a DigiTech Vocalist, and various phaser effects. They used the pitch-correcting software Auto-Tune on vocals "in a way it wasn't designed to work". Bangalter said: "We're interested in making things sound like something other than what they are. There are guitars that sound like synthesizers, and there are synthesizers that sound like guitars." Discovery was mastered by Nilesh Patel, who also had mastered Homework.Homework (liner notes). Daft Punk. Virgin Records, a division of Universal Music Group. 42609. 1997.
One of the first tracks to come out of the Discovery sessions, "One More Time", was completed in 1998 and was left "sitting on a shelf" until its single release in 2000. After completing "Too Long" early in the production, Daft Punk decided that they "didn't want to do 14 more house tracks" in the way the genre is usually defined and thus set out to incorporate a variety of styles for the record. The album features musical contributions from Romanthony, Todd Edwards, and DJ Sneak. Homem-Christo noted that Romanthony and Edwards were among the producers who significantly influenced Daft Punk. The duo had wanted to work with them on Homework but found it difficult to convince them to do so since Daft Punk were still relatively unknown. DJ Sneak wrote the lyrics to "Digital Love" and assisted in its production.
Music Theme Discovery is a concept album. It relates strongly to Daft Punk's childhood memories, incorporating their love of cinema and character. Bangalter said it deals with the duo's experiences growing up in the decade between 1975 and 1985, rather than just being a tribute to the music of that period. The record was designed to reflect a playful, honest, and open-minded attitude toward listening to music. Bangalter compared it to the state of childhood when one does not judge or analyse music. Bangalter noted the stylistic approach was in contrast to that of their previous effort. "Homework [...] was a way to say to the rock kids, like, 'Electronic music is cool'. Discovery was the opposite, of saying to the electronic kids, 'Rock is cool, you know? You can like that.'" He elaborated that Homework had been "a rough and raw thing" focused on sound production and texture; in contrast, the goal of Discovery was to explore song structures and new musical forms, which was inspired by Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker".
Composition In his review for AllMusic, John Bush wrote that Discovery is "definitely the New York garage edition" of Homework. He said Daft Punk produced a "glammier, poppier" version of Eurodisco and R&B by over-embellishing their pitch-bend and vocoder effects, including loops of divas, synth-guitars, and electric piano. Stylus Magazines Keith Gwillim described Discovery as a disco album, with disco's "danceable" and "sappy" elements, including its processed vocals and "prefabricated" guitar solos. Other critics described it as post-disco and electro-funk. Uproxx said it also incorporates French house, while Stereogum described the album as disco-house.
The opening track, "One More Time", features heavily Auto-Tuned and compressed vocals from Romanthony. "Aerodynamic" has a funk groove, an electric guitar solo, and ends with a separate "spacier" electronic segment. The arpeggiated solo was compared to Yngwie Malmsteen by Pulse!. "Digital Love" contains a solo performed on Wurlitzer piano, vintage synthesisers and sequencers; it incorporates elements of pop, new wave, jazz, funk and disco. "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is an electro song. It is followed by "Crescendolls", an instrumental. "Nightvision" is an ambient track. "Superheroes" leans toward the "acid minimalism" of Homework. It begins with a drum roll and includes arpeggios that are said to resemble those in the soundtrack to the 1980 film Flash Gordon. "High Life" is built over a "gibberish" vocal sample and contains an organ-like section. "Something About Us" is a downtempo song, with digitally processed vocals and lounge rhythms.
"Voyager" has guitar riffs, harp-like 80s synths, and a funky bassline. "Veridis Quo" is a "faux-orchestral" synthesiser baroque song; according to Angus Harrison, its title is a pun on the words "very disco". "Short Circuit" is an electro-R&B song with breakbeats and programmed drum patterns. "Face to Face" is a dance-pop song featuring vocals from Todd Edwards and is more pop-oriented than the other tracks on Discovery. Bangalter noted that the preceding track "Short Circuit" represented the act of shutting down and that "Face to Face" represents regaining consciousness and facing reality. "Too Long", the final track, is a ten-minute-long electro-R&B song.
Discovery uses a number of samples. The liner notes credit samples from "I Love You More" by George Duke on "Digital Love", "Cola Bottle Baby" by Edwin Birdsong on "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", "Can You Imagine" by The Imperials on "Crescendolls", and "Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed" by Barry Manilow on "Superheroes". "One More Time" contains a sample of the 1979 disco song "More Spell on You" by Eddie Johns. Daft Punk pay royalties to the publishing company that owns the rights, but Johns has never been located; , he was owed an estimated "six-to-seven-figure sum" based on streams. Edwards recalled that he and Daft Punk curated 70 samples each to incorporate into "Face to Face". Bangalter said Daft Punk also created "fake samples", which listeners assumed were from disco or funk records. Homem-Christo estimated that the duo played half of the sampled material on Discovery themselves.
Promotion and release
Daft Punk initially planned to release every song on Discovery as a single, according to Orla Lee-Fisher, who was head of marketing for Virgin Records UK at the time, although this plan was eventually shelved. "One More Time" was released in 2000, ahead of the album's release. The album was released on 12 March 2001, followed by singles for "Aerodynamic", "Digital Love", "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", "Something About Us", and "Face to Face".
The ideas for music videos formed during the early Discovery recording sessions. The album was originally intended to be accompanied by "a live-action film with each song being a part of the film", according to Todd Edwards. Daft Punk decided instead to concentrate on an anime production. Their concept involved the merging of science fiction with entertainment industry culture.Interstella 5555 DVD insert, 2003. The duo recalled watching Japanese anime as children, including favourites such as Captain Harlock, Grendizer, and Candy Candy. Daft Punk brought the album and the completed story to Tokyo in the hope of creating the film with their childhood hero, Leiji Matsumoto, who had created Captain Harlock. After Matsumoto joined the team as visual supervisor, Shinji Shimizu had been contacted to produce the animation and Kazuhisa Takenouchi to direct the film. With the translation coordination of Tamiyuki "Spike" Sugiyama, production began in October 2000 and ended in April 2003. The result of the collaboration was an anime film, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, which features the entirety of Discovery as the soundtrack.
Daft Punk adopted robot costumes in the lead-up to Discoverys release. The group told the press they were working in their studio at 9:09 am on 9 September 1999, when their sampler exploded. They had to undergo reconstructive surgery, and, regaining consciousness, they they had become robots. Bangalter later stated it was due to the 9999 bug, a precursor to the Y2K bug.
Shortly before the album's release, Daft Punk launched Daft Club, a website that offered exclusive tracks and other bonus material. Every Discovery CD included a Daft Club membership card bearing a unique number that provided access to the website. Bangalter said this was "our way of rewarding people who buy the CD". The service provided by the site ended in 2003; most of the tracks were then compiled into the remix album Daft Club. For the 20th anniversary of Interstella 5555, Daft Punk reissued Discovery with Japanese artwork, stickers, and Daft Club membership cards.
Commercial performance Discovery reached number two on the UK Albums Chart and the French Albums Chart and number 23 on the US Billboard 200. It debuted at number two on the Canadian Albums Chart, selling 13,850 copies in its first week. It was certified triple platinum in France in 2007 for shipments of 600,000 copies and certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 11 October 2010.