Daft Punk - Homework (1997)

Now here's an interesting album. You know who Daft Punk is, or at least you know that one song they played that got so huge it won them a Grammy for album of the year a couple years back. But this isn't that Daft Punk. This is the Daft Punk that existed a dozen years earlier in France before anyone in America cared. I think this is even before they started wearing robot costumes on stage. So back in the old days were they the same Euro-trash techno duo I know today? I really hope the answer is no.

Ugh... The answer is yes.

The third song is called "Revolution 909" which obviously pisses me off. Luckily it has nothing in common with the John Lennon song, aside from the fact that I hate it. I would call this video game music but it's too dumb for that. It's mostly just a beat with the only thing providing even a quantum of melody, or an approximation of musical notes, is a quiet bass. The rest of the song is just a canned dance beat. So many boots and pants.

My god, it just keeps going and going. How can anyone dance to stuff like this? I'm sitting here listening, and the monotony is sooooo deadening. I mean that. It makes me want to kill myself. It's like water torture via my eardrums. The fifth track is a "song" named "Around The World." It has lyrics thusly:

Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld,
Around the world around the WOR-uhld...

That doesn't even cover one fiftieth of it, because the song is over SEVEN MINUTES LONG. I will never forgive Daft Punk for this, nor will I forgive the asshats who wrote 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die for including this piece of shit album on their list. Least of all I will never forgive myself for obsessing over this project for so long that it brought me to this moment where I will have this affront to the whole concept of music stuck in my head for the rest of my life. The worst part is I just checked the track list on the album and I'm less than halfway through.

I'm beginning to think the guys in Daft Punk are horrible human beings, because the only way I can think they produced the sound that makes up the "melody" of "Rollin' and Scratchin'" is to take a shitty old microphone from the 40s and use it to record a baboon screaming as they slowly peeled its skin off. Forgive me for being graphic, but it's a horrible sound and they play it over and over again at different pitches for close to 8 minutes.

I assume "High Fidelity" is supposed to be a joke title. The song features so many scraps of samples it sounds like a hopelessly stuck CD. I had to turn it off. My face felt like it was melting I was so distraught from listening.

Track 11 is called "Rock'n Roll." When I saw that title I really feared for my life. All I could think was Daft Punk had gone and sampled a piece of the classic Led Zeppelin tune "Rock And Roll" and completely destroyed it much like Ice-T had done to "When The Levee Breaks" on O.G. Original Gangster. Thankfully Daft Punk has not done that, but they also didn't do anything with this song to justify calling anything close to the classic popular musical form. For the thousandth time on Homework Daft Punk have used an annoying sound effect in place of melody. In this case it sounds like two pieces of plastic rubbing together and making a "wub wub wub" noise. Said wubbing is laid over a boots and pants beat for almost seven minutes. Fucking why? Because fuck my life, that's why.

I'm angry. I hate Daft Punk a lot right now. I hate that this crap sells enough to make Daft Punk richer than most people. I imagine that there are lots of people making shit exactly like this on their computers in their basement wondering why the fuck Daft Punk have a record deal and they don't. I feel for them, and I especially feel for other obscure artists who I know are making better music than Daft Punk but aren't getting recognized.

Fuck Daft Punk. Fuck Homework. 1 star.