Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. The definitive Daft Punk!
Human after all, who'd have thought it? Don't be deceived though, this album is home to the best robot rock of all the solar systems in all the universe, yes Daft Punk are back in a big way! The third album from the French duo in their career that spans more than a decade. The release of a Daft Punk LP doesn't come every day!
And this has got it all, the vast and fast dancescapes of Homework and the subtle magnitudes of Discovery, it's the definitive Daft Punk, it draws on their illustrious past and puts it all together effortlessly in a truly unbeatable happy dance record. Opening is the title track, and it makes every single hair stand on end, what a luscious sound, that watery, 70's guitar, the unmistakable vocorder voice, the pounding drums that dictate the rhythm of your hips, every delicacy touched up and polished off to perfection, there's no faulting the first instalment on this remarkable opus. It's as good as One More Time!
Then to The Prime Time of Your Life, another great song, clumsy, befuddling guitar crunches lead into the pacey prime, which then accelerates and accelerates until it peaks at fifty thousand mph and slams the breaks on for an absolute halt. Not only does this album relive the essence of what makes this band so beautiful, it also reinvents it. There's more developed concepts to be found in the beats and rhythms. The style gets really quite hardcore in The Brainwasher with a deranged voice reciting the title, reminiscent of Aphex's Come To Daddy howl.
Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel De Homen Christo come closer than they ever have to replicating the sounds of electro-pioneers Kraftwerk, and in doing so, they come closer to really challenging the seminal godfathers for their place at the pole position of the genre. Steam Machine pays homage to the techno kitsch of the German masters' formidable style and Television Rules The Nation brings Kraftwerk's acute sense of man's relation to machine into the 21st century.
Make Love is a soft-edged gem alike to Nightvision on Discovery but, whereas there was an over-abundance of those little bits on that album, it works here implicitly, on Human After All they haven't set a foot wrong. Likewise On/Off is a cool little interjection that supersedes its Discovery equal: Highlife.
But how can any band live up to the ultimate song of all time Harder Better Faster Stronger, even its creators? Well, Technologic is the answer, its rampant words and musical ability to make your head shake till it implodes means Human After All isn't without that special number that will appear on every party playlist. Robot Rock too, surely the forthcoming single, is a massive classic that will have floors ablaze with dancers until its necessary to stop, Discovery may have had the opening four to rule them all, but Human After All is the all-rounder, not a blemish on it, an indisputable tour de force.
One more time: You shouldn't live without this record, it's probably a health risk. Buy it, it's the definitive monument of Daft Punk's electronic mastery. 2005 is the year the pros come back to kick the punks' asses.