Do it faster, makes us stronger, more than ever, hour after, our work is never over.” It is workout music that is already working out. The album’s centerpiece is the propulsive “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” which samples Edwin Birdsong’s “Cola Bottle Baby.” After singing each word of the title, one at a time, the group moves into an evenly spaced chant that is sort of like Maoist yoga: “Work it harder, make it better. “Discovery,” from 2001, is perhaps the most influential dance record in recent memory. The group laid the groundwork for the growing contemporary dance genre by making music that was slightly rougher and almost comically synthetic-the latter symbolized by their habit of wearing robot helmets in their public appearances. Twenty years later, Daft Punk hasn’t so much changed dance music as dominated it. Daft Punk’s début single, “The New Wave,” from 1994, was a fast, thumping techno track built from drum machines and synthesizers. In 1993, when the French duo Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo released their first record, as members of the rock band Darlin’, an English journalist described the music as “a daft punky thrash.” Shortened, this became the name of their next project, a not very punk dance act. It raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good? Photograph by Dan Winters
“Random Access Memories,” from Daft Punk, is extremely ambitious and wildly inconsistent.
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