Search - Daft Punk :: Alive 2007

Great album, makes you feel like you are there (long review)

J.P.D. | 03/15/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Ro-bot. Ro-bot. Ro-bot. Rock. Robot Rock." So begins over an hour of nonstop music of exactly that--a rock concert performed without a single acoustic instrument, only computers and digital processors controlled by two Frenchmen in robot costumes. Covering a good portion of their large catalogue, Daft Punk's Alive 2007 album is a greatest hits of sorts for the duo--the way it may be played at a party rather than on a radio; songs transition from one to the next with little silence and often without a track break, they have increased sample and phrase repetition as well as dedicated time to building instrumental arches (of pre-recorded samples), and from start to finish thousands of screaming fans in the background bring the live experience to your living room. On the whole it is a technosonic masterpiece--bringing together electronic music, electroacoustic music, looping altered in real time, and real time digital alteration of the fundamental characteristics of sound (timbre, frequency, amplitude, duration, and envelope), all rooted in prerecorded samples.



Though it is a complete work, the album is frontloaded. My favorite parts of the album are contained within the first five tracks, engrossing the listener through the first half hour in a very punchy and hook-based style. While there are certainly highlights over the next eight tracks there are also sections which seem to drag and let the listener become disengaged.



The first two tracks of the album work together to draw in the audience with pounding bass and a focus on (sampled) vocals, while utilizing some basic live computer manipulations to create the music in real time. The first track ("Robot Rock / Oh Yeah") evolves utilizing two words "Human" and "Robot," as they are played in repeating sequence; indecipherable at first due to the sample being played at a very slow BPM rate, the word "Human" evolves as the track picks up speed over a minute. Drum and bass loops and a pitch slowly increasing in frequency and amplitude enter before evolving into a song closer to the original album version of "Robot Rock."



On the second track ("Touch It / Technologic"), Daft Punk highlights the use of samples, sampling a sample of their own song used by Busta Rhymes. Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" samples Daft Punk's original "Technologic," as Missy Elliot repeatedly sings, "Touch it. Bring it. Pay it. Watch it. Turn it. Leave It. Start. Format it"--the last line of the verse of "Technologic." Having been a major success the year prior, "Touch It" receives a large crowd response and may work to include listeners which discovered the group through Busta Rhymes rather than vice versa. The sample is heavily and rapidly manipulated in real time, affecting the frequency and overall tonal quality before Daft Punk transitions from into "Technologic" for the remainder of the song.



Track three starts off rather simplistically, sampling the groups' well known "Television Rules the Nation" track for the first 2:46 before jumping into a blend with "Crescendolls." "Cresendolls" utilizes an ascending digital keyboard sound with sampled vocal samples singing "Ya!" "Hey!" and "Hey ya!" The lyrics are simple, but the unified sampled yells of "Hey!" brings the crowd into the performance, as the crowd mimics the samples. A brief moment of odd transition and downtime begin the fourth track ("Too Long / Steam Machine") before the vocal and bass lines of "Too Long" kick in to bring up the tempo once more. The up-tempo pace is short-lived, as Daft Punk once again slows down the beats per minute drastically at the 1:31 mark. Over the next three minutes the tempo slowly builds again before breaking down at 4:36 to even slower than before. As if suddenly caught in viscous liquid, Daft Punk lets the music linger at a slow tempo before suddenly setting the listener and the crowd free at the 5:06 mark to the up-tempo phrase.



Track five is the highlight of the album, beginning with Daft Punk looping "Around the World" under repeated samples of a male voice whispering, "Machine." At the 2:02 mark, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" enters without a bass line. Thirty seconds later, "Around the World" is layered on top of the track for another thirty seconds before a strong bass punches in to mark the tempo and momentum of the song as the vocal sample endlessly repeats, "Around the World." The vocal line of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is then heavily manipulated using pitch-altered, syncopated clips to create a seemingly random but perfectly fitting section. In addition to changes in tempo, this song highlights the interesting use of loop layers--dropping out low end beats to make one focus on lyrics while taking a break from the punching bass or adding in the beat to once again drive the tempo.



With the highlight of the album coming less than halfway through, it is inevitably hard to keep up the almost euphoric mood. Beginning with track six, rather fittingly entitled "Burnin' / Too Long," drawn out sections distract from the mood; the tempo is up and the overall Daft Punk sound remains, but compared to the hook and bass-driven sections before it, track six and some to follow may inspire the listener to make a break rather than continue on. Though very similar in sound, Daft Punk transitions into a slightly different style of electronic music which is smoother and less punchy overall. The one glaring exception to this style shift is track eight, "One More Time / Aerodynamic" which is much closer in style to the first five tracks.



Overall, Alive 2007 shows that Daft Punk has mastered live improvisation of computer music. Though much of the greatness of Alive 2007 was created prior to the performance in studio-made samples, the performance brings the music to life in a way the group's studio creations cannot. I highly recommend this album for any fan of technosonic music."