It’s Daft Punk madness time. Their Australian tour has just been announced (December 22 for Sydneysiders living under a rock), and everybody‘s going crazy (myself included), and for good reason too: I only needed to see their storming set from Coachella in May last year to realize that these boys do know a thing or two about working a vibe.

Now, working a vibe is all very well and good, and a talent in its own right, but I was a little surprised to find a page documenting the samples used in various Daft Punk songs, and discovering that many of them are very… well, unaltered.

Sampling is one of those issues that has divided the musical world for decades now, and although I’m entirely all for sampling, I’m not quite sure where I stand on the issue of what is ostensibly more hook burglary rather than obtaining sounds and riffs and working them into an entirely new musical context (which I am a huge proponent of). This post will probably draw a lot of comment representing both sides of the debate.

So, let’s check out a couple of samples shall we: (and again, full credit must go to Palms Out Sounds for their locating all of these sounds – I’ve just excerpted them to save effort for you, dear reader. check out the site for full length tracks)

Digital Love (as found on Discovery)

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From “I Love You More” by George Duke

I guess I found this one relatively innocuous – mostly because Daft Punk build a good song on top of it and it features one of the best solos to do an air synth solo to, but still – it proves why the song is so repetitive: almost all of the significant sounds come from the sample itself, which was not something I was expecting.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (also from Discovery)

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From “Cola Bottle Baby” by Edwin Birdsong

Pretty much everything that I thought was dope about this loop is pretty much present in the original: that kickin’ ride bell, the interplay between those classic synths, and that guitar slide (which I had thought was an extra sample dropped in).

Robot Rock (on Human After All)

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From “Release the Beast” by Breakwater

On Human After All, Daft Punk proved that although their ability to get a great sound was more or less flawless, their execution of this was not always as compelling. In my original review (sorry, old blog), given while listening an early leak which I assumed had to be a fake made by the duo to confound illegal trading (I was wrong), I waxed lyrical about the “hot” sound (“…tight drum sounds, big guitars…”).

Now what do I make of that when this sample suggests that the drums sounds are… well… just part of the sample. And the keyboard riff. And the big guitars.

I think this track probably makes the biggest move from “art” into the territory of “robbery”. I mean, c’mon: adding a vocoder does not a track make.

In Conclusion

I’m not sure what to make of this: I don’t want to be so closed minded as to write it off as a talentless reuse of some great sounds (it’s not, not entirely anyway). At the same time, it’s certainly not in the same league of many of the sample-borrowing artists that I’m particularly a fan of.

Your thoughts? I have a hunch that I’ll probably have a few people reminding me that it’s music for the dancefloor, not the mind.