Daft Punk: 'the most inventive collective mind in dance music'
Daft Punk's reputation as the most inventive collective mind in dance music has taken a battering over the last few weeks. This is thanks to the PalmsOut music blog, where every Wednesday a different artist has the building blocks of their songs unearthed and posted online. In late February, the musical detectives deconstructed the band's most famous tracks, unearthing a raft of long-lost (and never-even-found-in-the-first-place) disco tracks. "I think most of you will be as shocked as I was to hear some of these tracks," wrote the blogger responsible. "You'll either decide Daft Punk isn't as genius as you thought they were or that they're twice as amazing ... these tracks are essential."
They're certainly illuminating. While dance music is obviously built on sampling, few people realised the extent to which Daft Punk were lifting vast chunks of existing tunes. Indeed, the phased guitar riff that makes up the entirety of Robot Rock is just the opening phrase of Release The Beast by Breakwater with little else done to it. A similarly generous chunk of The Imperials' Can You Imagine? makes up most of Crescendolls, from their celebrated 2001 album Discovery.
A furious debate has broken out online between their defenders and detractors, with many posting more in sorrow than anger: "I feel like I found out that I'm adopted and met my real parents," wrote one. "I still love the parents I grew up with but I just feel kind of ripped off by them." Because Daft Punk's debut album Homework was largely a self-generated affair and a world away from the Fisher Price-sampling of Fatboy Slim et al, most fans assumed they'd made their subsequent records in the same vein.
But this lack of originality is nothing new and certainly not exclusive to dance music (see Led Zeppelin's out-of-court settlement with Willie Dixon, among a trillion other examples). Clearly, Daft Punk's light robotic fingers are just a modern version of referencing, and building on, older songs.
To my mind, dance music's real difference from rock is that it works on a much more visceral level. It's about the feel of the groove, not the sound of tune, or indeed the lyrics. Daft Punk has done more than any other modern act to create music that feels different to anything that has gone before, even if elements of it sound the same. And for this, they're probably still the most important pop group of the last 10 years. No matter what a few angry bloggers might think.
