Homework Remixes: when Daft Punk paid homage to their US dance roots
Homework Remixes: when Daft Punk paid homage to their US dance roots
Plus Heavee, Jane Weaver, Sandwell District, Joy Orbison and more
For a duo of exquisite taste, Daft Punk sure did commission some terrible remixes. I once described their remixed catalogue as being packed with more turds than a baker’s toilet and I stick with that. Daft Punk have released four (four!!) remix albums to date, not including RAM Drumless, which sits somewhere out there on its own, and three of them are genuinely terrible.
Daft Club gathers up remixes from Discovery-era Punk (plus Basement Jaxx’s execrable take on Phoenix) and, with a couple of notable exceptions, proves how terrible Discovery could have been in the hands of lesser producers. (The infamous Pitchfork review of the album, which gave it a 1.3, was possibly a little lenient in its criticism, if anything.)
Human After All: Remixes, perversely, showed what a bad idea Human After All was in Daft Punk’s hands - but that it could certainly get even worse, when paired with the wrong remixer. And Tron: Legacy Reconfigured is so bereft of life it led former Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter - aka the nicest person in dance music - to write a open letter of complaint to Disney. Put it this way: the Crystal Method will go to their grave know they remixed Daft Punk and you never did. And that is the true Legacy of Reconfigured.
I have long speculated about why remixes of Daft Punk are so terrible. (I think we can discard Legacy Reconfigured from the argument here: it is terrible because the remixers themselves are terrible, by and large.) The best I can come up with, then, is that Daft Punk were charitable enough to give remix opportunities to younger producers, who may have felt intimidated by the task in hand. But this only works part of the time.
For whatever reason, the glorious exception to this rule is Homework Remixes, which was released in 2022 as part of the 25th anniversary reissue of Homework. Over 15 songs - on the digital edition - it rounds up most of the remixes from the three Homework singles, Around The World, Burnin’ and Revolution 909, throwing in the extended version of Teachers and the Revolution Acapella from Revolution 909.
The last two tracks are inessential. And Homework Remixes isn’t entirely comprehensive either, missing Armand van Helden’s stunning Ten Minutes Of Funk Mix remix of Da Funk for, I suspect, copyright reasons. It’s a big miss, given that it is among the best Daft Punk remixes of all time and its serpentine funk features heavily in Alive 97. Motorbass’s rambling Miami mix of Around The World is also missing and, for posterity’s sake, it would have been nice for the album to include Ian Pooley’s unreleased Burnin’ remix, which he has been trying to get released for a while.
I’ve written about this before - notably in my Daft Punk book - but Daft Punk were always the most American of all the French Touch groups. St Germain, Motorbass, DJ Cam, Air, Dimitri from Paris et al all had something distinctly Gallic in their sounds, be it in a touch of jazz or the whiff of lounge. But Daft Punk didn’t, really. While Thomas and Guy-Man did come up with their own sound, they were hugely influenced by Chicago house and Detroit techno, not to mention US hip hop, R&B and funk. Thomas Bangalter, lest we forget, spent three weeks in New York in 1993 visiting night clubs, right at the start of Daft Punk.
"Daft Punk's real core influences from house music came from America," Roger Sanchez told me for the book, ”a lot of Chicago producers, they are really into the Chicago heads, [DJ] Sneak, they were into some really obscure guys that at the time were really creating a very dirty, proto-techno sound. And obviously, techno came from Detroit."
Homework Remixes marks the moment that Daft Punk came closest to their roots in US dance music. Of the 13 remixes (minus the extended version of Teachers and the Revolution Acapella), nine came from the 90s US house music elite: Masters at Work (who provide four), Roger Sanchez (working with a fellow American, Junior Sanchez), Todd Terry (two) and DJ Sneak (two), who sprinkle Daft Punk’s work with US house dust and disco glamour.
The album is very much a family affair. Sneak and Masters at Work’s Louie Vega and Kenny Dope are both mentioned in Teachers, while Sneak would go on to work on Discovery; Roger Sanchez toured with the band on the Daftendirekt tour; and Todd Terry is named in the live version of Teachers that Daft Punk played on the same tour.
The other three remixers keep things equally close to home (work). Slam, who provide two remixes of Burnin’, signed a youthful Daft Punk to their Soma label in 1993; Ian Pooley got the duo in to remix his Chord Memory in 1996; I:Cube did likewise with Disco Cubizm; and Motorbass were Paris house royalty, consisting of Etienne de Crecy and Philippe Zdar, later of Cassius.
How relevant this is in the success of Homework Remixes I don’t know. (I suspect it is quite relevant, if not defining.) But for whatever reason, Homework Remixes is undoubtedly a fine record. You wouldn’t, perhaps, want to sit down to the whole thing, given how often the same three songs repeat. But, taken in doses, Homework Remixes stands up proudly for the art of remixing.
While I have always enjoyed Aphex Twin’s remixes, his approach of throwing out most of the original track and concentrating on some scrap of production (or not even that, eh Evan Dando?) is somehow cheating, like a remix should be a recognisable enhancement of the record at hand.
For the vast majority of its 13 reworks, Homework Remixes stays true to this ethos. The only exception is Motorbass’s Vice mix of Around The World, which, bar the odd scrap of vocodered vocal, sounds like an entirely new track. But, frankly, an entirely new track from the not exactly prolific Motorbass duo is a treat by any name.
The Homework Remixes aren’t necessarily better than the original tracks, of course. But the remixers succeed in welcoming Daft Punk into their own individual worlds. I:Cube makes Around The World chaotic and jazzy, like his own brilliant records for Versatile; DJ Sneak gives Burnin’ a tough, Chicago edge; Roger and Junior Sanchez add a tough New York hip hop house flavour to Revolution 909; Masters at Work bring their rolling percussion and soulful chords to Around The World; and Todd Terry gives Daft Punk some of his wild sampling energy on his two remixes of Around The World (both of which, bizarrely, sample Armand van Helden’s Mongloids in Space remix of Runaway by NuYorican Soul - aka Masters at Work.)
Essentially, the US remixes answer the (admittedly rather obscure) question of what would Daft Punk have sounded like, had Bangalter decided to stay in New York in 1993 rather than return to Paris. Not that different, perhaps, but steeped in an intriguing new shade, the Americanness of the tunes turned up by 20%. At the same time, they provide a welcome fresh perspective on songs that I have listened to far too many times for comfort.
More importantly, the two best remixes stand up to anything in the Daft Punk catalogue. Ian Pooley’s Cut Up mix of Burnin’ beats Sneak at his own game by taking a razor to Burnin’s wonderfully twitching bass line, slicing it into tense coils of spasmodic funk, while adding drums that swing with super-hard funk. (Pro DJ tip; try mixing from Pooley’s Cut Up mix of Burnin’ into the original then back again: it works a treat.)
Masters at Work’s Mellow Mix of Around The World, meanwhile, does the wonderful remixer’s trick of taking a neglected part of the original tune - in this case, the bubbling synth riff - and bringing it into the heart of the song, its sunshine vibes resembling Around The World if it had been made on a Californian beach rather than in a Parisian bedroom.
All of which adds up to an essential release. Homework Remixes is not just the best Daft Punk remix album by far, the only one you can listen to without wanting to set light to your hearing, it’s also a record that offers a fascinating insight into Daft Punk as US-influenced house music group, pre-Discovery pop pioneers, Human After All noiseniks and Random Access Memories LA poolside party boys. Which is an illuminating and perhaps under-used lens to view this revered and much missed robotic duo.
Some listening
Chicago producer Heavee brings a dayglo sunshine to footwork. Sumthin Different, from his forthcoming album, opens with a gorgeous flurry of synths, like coral swaying in underwater current, then careers into a slice of footwork-adjacent music that is tonally light and rhythmically heavy.
Over 11 albums Jane Weaver has nailed the art of rolling avant garde musical ideas into highly consumable shapes. Her 2021 album Flock, for example, was apparently inspired by Lebanese torch songs and Australian punk but slipped down the gullet on day-time radio like a Coldplay chart topper. Perfect Storm, which is taken from Weaver’s new album Love In Constant Spectacle, rides a similar wave, weaving Komische synths and library music funk on the Broadcast axis into a honeyed pop song.
Sandwell District & Silent Servant & Regis - Sampler 1 B1 (Regis Edit)
Some of my favourite techno - early Plastikman, classic Carl Craig, B12 etc. - is so coldly emotive it feels almost warm. The cunningly titled Sampler 1 B1, a classic track from the Sandwell District collective / label, which is being re-released as party of a new retrospective, is exactly that, its stainless steel, surfaces, ornate synth wash and perfectly toned drum machines evoking the melancholic astral sweep of outer space. The result is techno for funerals and I mean that in the very best way.
As an electronic music producer I can’t imagine there is any greater joy than finding a big, f*ck off stupid noise that you just know is going to absolutely kill on any dance floor. And that, pretty much, is what Joy Orbison has done with the ridiculous descending bass growl on flight fm. The producer apparently made the track while waiting for a lift to perform at last year's Lost Village Festival, and this immediacy comes rumbling across in a song of pure, stupid joy.
Creation Rebel - Space Movement Section 1
In a week of little new music - as far as I could find, anyway - I have been immersed in the psychedelic space dub odyssey that is Starship Africa, the fourth album by Creation Rebel, aka the On-U Sound house band. Imagine dub if it was powered by LSD rather than weed and you essentially have Starship Africa, all backwards suck, percussive dubs and the most utterly comforting bass lines. Starship Africa has gone right into the upper echelons of my favourite dub albums.
Things I’ve done
Today is the eight birthday and 150th episode of Line Noise. To celebrate, I spoke to DJ Paulette, a DJ of 30 years standing, Haçienda resident, TV presenter, radio host and now author, of the book Welcome to the Club: the life and lessons of a Black Woman DJ. We talked about whitewashing in dance music, Manchester clubbing, lessons learned from three decades of DJing, the Haçienda, Beyoncé “saving” house music and much, much more.
Line Noise Ben Frost interview
Netflix’s weird, wonderful and utterly terrifying time-and-dimension-travelling series Dark is one of the best shows I have ever seen and Ben Frost’s score plays a major part in setting up the terror. I got a chance to interview him back in 2019, before the debut of the third series of Dark, and indulge my every whim. With the announcement of his new album, Scope Neglect, I went back to dig out the interview, which we did for Sprung, our daily show on Radio Primavera Sound, and made it into a Line Noise. For any fans of Dark, it should be a fascinating listen. And if you’re not a fan of Dark then I don’t know what to do with you. Bonus point to Frost for having to end the interview after mice chewed through his internet cable.
If you’ve heard of Finnish pop duo Maustetytöt it may well be through their iconic appearance in Aki Kaurismaki’s 2023 film Fallen Leaves. And if you’ve seen that, you’ve probably already fallen in love with them. We spoke to the duo last week for the Radio Primavera Sound Twitch and I was delighted to hear they DO have a sense of humour, albeit one as black as charred lava. Naturally, we also asked them about working with Aki Kaurismaki. You can listen to it here and watch it (for a limited time) here, about 1.25.00 in. It’s in English too.
….. and talking of which, we are back on the Radio Primavera Sound Twitch, every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 11am to 1pm, CET. Join us live. Or you can catch up on it all here.
Things other people have done
I Can’t Accept That: University Challenge, Jungle And How Glibness Creates Bad History
I know, I KNOW. I don’t spend nearly enough time recommending things that other people have written / made. And I should because there is loads of excellent work out there. Anyway, this week I loved Joe Muggs’ piece on the whole University Challenge Jungle / drum & bass kerfuffle and why it REALLY isn’t as simple as jungle = all the early authentic stuff and drum & bass = Wilkinson. I thought about writing something on this subject. And now I don’t have to. Also, I have been writing something else, vaguely related, and I am using jungle and drum & bass interchangeably because it just works.
The Playlists
Yes, I still have two: the Newest and the Bestest, which traces the best of new music from the last three year, and the Newest and the Bestest 2024, which does the same for this wretched year we have just embarked on. Follow whichever one you like.