DAFT PUNK-HUMAN AFTER ALL (REVIEW)

5.5/10

I went into this 2005 record knowing only that it was made in two months’ time and that it was, among Daft Punk’s fan base, not an album that was favored. I have heard some of Daft Punk’s other works like Random Access Memories ad a few songs off of discovery but not enough to make a comparison between this album and their previous one.

The first track, the title track, has a very catchy line and pulsating, almost hypnotic rhythm coming from the drum machine. The grimy, frog-like vocoding, which is a staple in DP’s music, is also rather enjoyable. A distorted guitar, which, though has a tone that I don’t particularly like, still fits into the song.

I’m not too sure about the second track, Prime Time of Your Life. The track seems to have little direction. It’s noisy and messy and just ends up being a cut on the album where the only thing appealing about the song is the vocal line.

Robot Rock was initially my favorite track on the record, because the synth and guitar lines are just infectious and I could listen to the song for hours buutttt, after reading up about the song, I learnt that this song sampled Breakwater’s “Release the Beast”, and to quote a comment on the video of the aforementioned song, “Damn daft punk not even adding anything”.

I wasn’t too fond Steam Machine either. Though the synth and the drum machine, as in all songs, created a funky heavy sort of groove, I found it very difficult to get past the whispering which made me rather uncomfortable.

Make Love is a nice addition to the track listing because it gives some respite from the heavy industrial vibes. It’s sweet, almost sensual and the vocals just peek through the mix. The piano and guitar tones are also worlds apart from the rest of the album, and the song is rather refreshing.

The next few songs are more of the same heavy industrial vibe. Technologic, is an interesting cut off the album. The childlike repetitive vocals that seem to be feeding instructions to a computer are rather creepy and the instrumentation on this song is relatively sparse, making it one of the more intriguing songs on the album, but is still able to carry through that industrial vibes.

Emotion is the longest song on the album, almost 7 minutes, and is frankly, rather emotionless.

I rather enjoyed this album during the first few listens, but the more and more I looked for in it, the less I found in terms of clever instrumentation and song-writing. The songs are mostly repetitive and here Daft Punk Treads a fine line between being monotonous or hypnotic and depending on one’s mood, it can either be former or the latter. It isn’t a bad album, but its effect wears off pretty quickly.