The first time I heard the retro keyboard swirls and instant-payoff melody of “Digital Love” (which comes off as a cross between the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” and White Town’s “Your Woman” in the vocal department), I was hooked. The group has a real penchant for ’70s cheese, and I do mean that in a very good way. Thankfully, that was not the case as the rest of the album turned out to be some of the best dance music I’ve heard in a long time. Had I stopped right there, Daft Punk would have become another recent group that I would have passed over completely. Nothing overly funky nor very satisfying. Featuring Romanthony on robot vocoded lead vocals, the tune is your typical dance tune about dance celebration. So it was with much apathy when I first listened to Daft Punk’s first single from Discovery, “One More Time”. Now let me be the first to say I’m pretty damned sick of the robot vocoder voice that has been in countless dance tunes ever since Cher first threw it into overkill on “Believe”. After four more years, Daft Punk has returned with their sophomore long-player Discovery and for all intents and purposes it’s one hell of an album. In 1997, the duo (Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter) issued their debut album Homework on Virgin to much critical acclaim. Add to that list Paris’ own Daft Punk who have been wowing the critics since 1993 with their debut single “The New Wave”.
However, France has certainly upped the ante lately with Dimitri From Paris and Air, two highly listenable and often entertaining electronic artists who have offered the audiences something different and refreshing away from the usual drum’n’bass and house crank. I admit to not being impressed with the overall groove anymore. Prodigy was the only band who scored a big deal out of the whole brouhaha, and since then the buzz has faded away, with techno having crashed into other such subgenres as jungle over the past few years. But then the great techno buzz became too loud and the record industries started jumping at their chances to promote it as the next big thing. Lots of great singles came out from this period, such as Jaydee’s “Plastic Dreams”, Hope’s “Tree Frog”, N.R.G.’s “I Need Your Lovin'”, Crazy Ivan’s “Mozart’s Revenge”, Two Little Boys’ “Stylophonia”, and Psykosonik’s “Silicon Jesus” to name but a few. You see, I was hitting the clubs like mad four days out of the week circa 1993 when there was a whole lot of great dance music being created in the techno and house genres. I’m one of those people who will often sit around and start conversations with phrases like “Remember when techno music was really good?” I feel so damned old school these days.
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