but it doesn't. it lacks one key feature of Daft Punk music: mind-numbing repetition.
where everything from "Around the World" to "One More Time" to "Human After All" recycles the same four bar argument for their entire existence, Alive 2007 evolves, morphs, trips, skips, falls, flies, destabilizes, stabilizes, hovers, sinks, and rises. and in under a minute? this is not normal Daft Punk.
on more than one occasion, i've played this album for friends who previously had no interest in Daft Punk... but they found something here.
i'm starting to think that to appreciate Daft Punk studio albums, you have to have a particular kind of insanity. you either have to a) love dancing, or b) love being, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. you either get up and just move, because that's all that four-on-the-floor is commanding you to do, or you stare off into space and let the waves of existence wash over you in a stormy confusion of awe. the repetition lends itself to this experience. why do Christians repeat the Hail Mary?
but for the non-believers, Daft Punk have created something new altogether, something still danceable and full of life: Alive 2007. Bangalter and that other French dude deconstruct, reconstruct, sack and pillage their old pieces to create a masterful compilation of their own forays into house, techno, acid, funk, disco, and synth pop, jumping from 1997 to 2001 to 2005 to 1997 to 2005 to 2001 to 1997 like it's nothing at all. this is not just an epic artist retrospective, but a world-class dance party, the best there ever was, the only kind there has ever been, the party that is life.
the encore isn't even fair. besides mixing the title track of Human After All with "Together," our beloved robot djs decide it timely to combine "One More Time" with "Music Sounds Better With You," probably the two greatest dance songs from the 90s and two of the greatest dance songs of all time. i don't understand how the law of physics allow them to coexist in one space of time without our legs stretching into dancing black holes that worm their way across the universe.
Wikipedia fun time!
audio:
The Alive 2007 set used Ableton Live software on "custom made super-computers" for the show. Daft Punk accessed the hardware remotely with Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controllers and JazzMutant Lemur touchscreen pads within the central pyramid. Minimoog Voyager RME units were also implemented for the live performances. The four Voyager units and two Behringer mixers allowed Daft Punk to "mix, shuffle, trigger loops, filter, distort samples, EQ in and out, transpose or destroy and deconstruct synth lines."video:
The visuals of the 2006 and Alive 2007 tour were set up by XL Video. The company provided eight-core Mac Pro units running Catalyst v4 and Final Cut Pro. Daft Punk approached the company with their visual concept for the shows. "They came to us with a pretty fixed idea of what they wanted," said head of XL Video, Richard Burford. "They wanted to mix live video with effects. Using the eight-core Mac Pros, we were able to take in eight digital sources and treat them as video streams. Then they could use Catalyst to coordinate the video with lighting effects and add their own effects in on the fly. The final digital video streams ran to LED screens."wow. i always find technical stuff enjoyable to read, even if i don't understand half of it.
I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE VISUALS!
ok it's not going to matter to listeners of the album alone, unless you're a lucky bastard and attended one of the shows and have all the spinning flashes and pyramidal shine ingrained in your neural passageways, but the visuals from this tour we're otherworldly. check it out sometime.
i really can't believe this is my first Daft Punk post.
download. purchase.
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