Andrew Speaks/Types

I consider myself a pretty big Daft Punk fan. Not a huge Daft Punk fan, but I have all their albums and I really like them. I finished my collection this Christmas when I got Homework, their debut (and most critically-acclaimed) album. I had high hopes, and for the most part, this album lived up to them, but there’s parts that really rub me the wrong way. I’m going to give a song-by-song review of Homework in this blog, so here’s the tracklist:

1. “Daftendirekt” – 2:44
2. “WDPK 83.7 FM” - 0:28
3. “Revolution 909″ – 5:26
4. “Da Funk” – 5:28
5. “Phœnix” – 4:55
6. “Fresh” – 4:03
7. “Around The World” – 7:07
8. “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” – 7:26
9. “Teachers” – 2:52
10. “High Fidelity” – 6:00
11. “Rock’n Roll” – 7:32
12. “Oh Yeah” – 2:00
13. “Burnin’” – 6:53
14. “Indo Silver Club” – 4:32
15. “Alive” – 5:15
16. “Funk Ad” – 0:50

The album starts off with “Daftendirekt,” a play on words from the phrase “Live And Direct,” and it fits. Daftendirekt was recorded live, and it was the intro song to a Daft Punk concert, and very suiting as being the intro song here. I have no idea what he’s saying there, but it’s a good loop. Very good intro to the record.

“WDPK 83.7 FM” is nothing more than a looped sample, but it segueways Daftendirekt very nicely into “Revolution 909.” On its own, I probably wouldn’t like this. But I’m a person that always listens to albums all the way through, so this is a really good transition. I have to give Daft Punk props for giving their songs really great names. They try and put their name in normal things. All radio station call numbers have to start with W. So they just took 3 recognizable letters from “Daft Punk” and put them after a W to make their own radio station. Genius.

The next song is “Revolution 909″ and I really like this song, mostly because of the concept. The song “Revolution 9″ by The Beatles was a huge collage of sound with subliminal messages in it, and the phrase “Paul is dead” being repeated during a recording of people talking. In this song, there’s a lot of noise that comes before the music of this song, and someone yells “suicide” tying in this song to Revolution 9. I like Daft Punk’s references to things. The music of this song is kind of repetitive, but it’s not overly repetitive and has a good sound to it.

“Da Funk,” the next song, uses the title as an excuse to put their name in the titles of songs again. They could’ve said “The Funk,” but isntead they said “Da Funk,” which is what you get if you take the T and the P out of “Daft Punk.” Subtle, but cool. The music in this song is some of the best on the album.

“Phoenix” is kind of a lull. The music is good, and it’s a good song to be playing in the background while you’re working or something, but not a song that I would just put on and jam to.

The next track, “Fresh,” is a lot like Phoenix, but Fresh is very soothing. There’s a sample of the tide coming in and out during the whole thing and the song is very ambient sounding. This is something I would listen to when I want to be relaxed. Not a good standalone song, but good in the context of the album after the rush of Da Funk and Phoenix.

“Around The World” is probably the best song on the album. It’s definitely the most “songful” song on the album. This is one of the sonly songs that I heard BEFORE I got Homework, and I’ve loved it ever since. Really really good song. Very trance-like, just like Fresh before it. The thing that Homework really excels at is making a good flow throughout the album. All the songs seem to be in the “right” order. It’s very fluid.

“Rollin’ & Scratchin’” is one of the two worst songs on the album. I can listen to Homework all the way through, but when I get to Rollin’ & Scratchin’, I almost turn it off. The song is very annoying and displeasing to the ear. It’s creative on how it only uses one note for very long periods of time with no variations, and proves that you CAN make a one note song. But Queens Of The Stone Age already made an amazing one-chord song “You’ve Got A Killer Scene There, Man…” and it really kicks the crud out of this song. I really do not like this song. The end.

“Teachers,” has a very Discovery-esque vocal loop going on in the background, and that’s what makes the song worthwhile for me. The song is Daft Punk paying homage to their inspiration and it consists of naming off DJ’s that got them into the house music scene. Like I said, the background vocals make this song good. When those aren’t going on, it’s a little annoying.

The next song on the record is “High Fidelity.” This is one of the highlights of the album for me because it uses the non-lyrical vocal loop style that was expanded on in Daft Punk’s next album, Discovery. This is a very creative and catchy song.

Next: “Rock & Roll.” This song matches the annoyingness of Rollin’ & Scratchin’. The entire song almost is this strange vinyl scratch noise that sounds like two balloons being rubbed together over and over. This song hurts my ears.

“Oh Yeah” is a song that lives up to it’s name. Almost all the lyrics are “oh yeah.” This is kind of a throwaway song. I don’t think it add anything to the CD, and it’s not a good standalone song either. This is kind of an “in between” song, where you can’t tell if it’s a good song or a bad song. It’s leaning more towards the bad song side, though.

“Burnin’” is an awesome party song. The bassline in this song is really great, it makes the song good for me. Enough said.

“Indo Silver Club” is very dancy, but not really fast enough to be danced to. This song is alright. This is kind of like a dancier, not as catchy version of Burnin’.

“Alive” is the album’s real closer. It’s mostly a collage of percussion and synth. In my opinion, Daft Punk aren’t good at closing albums. They always have really good beginnings, but they always lose steam at the end. This song just proves that point even further. Discovery had a bad ending, and the next album, Human After All, had an awful ending. This one is worse than Discovery’s ending, but not as bad as Human After All.

The technical album closer is “Funk Ad,” or as some like to call it, “knuF aD.” This “song” is just about a minute of Da Funk, played backwards, and it actually doesn’t sound bad. A fun ending, even if it wasn’t really an ending, just more of a last word.

After listening to Homework a lot, I think that it’s almost as good as Daft Punk’s second album, Discovery. It’s pretty close, but Homework has too much filler, where as Discovery is good (almost) all the way through. This is really what Daft Punk is all about though. Discovery is their “weird” album, really.

Score:
3 out of 4 or 7.2 out of 10

Okay, I said “Queens For The Stone Age” at the beginning. I realize this, and I hate myself for saying it. But they’re probably my second favorite band ever, so don’t worry ’bout it. Also, there we’re lots of subtitles and things that we’re explaining things through the song, but youTube has terrible quality and made them fuzzy looking to where you can’t read them.

I hate different file types, and especially Apple for making the .MOV video file popular. No one has a mac. Okay, digital camera companies? Nobody. So don’t make your digital cameras take videos in freaking .MOV format, which is near impossible to get to edit on a Windows computer. Here is a chronicling of my epic journey to get videos on my blog every time I want to do it from now on.

1: I take the video, and the video is in .MOV format, unable to be changed on the camera itself.
2: I import the video into the My Videos folder, still as a .MOV
3: The first time I had to do this, I had to search for a good portion of my life to find a free, working converter that would change my .MOV movies to .ANYTHING_ELSE movies.
4: I then can use my .ANYTHING_ELSE movie file in Windows Movie Maker to add titles and edit the video.
5: Then I have to save it as a .WMMP or something project file.
6: Then I have to save that project file as a .WMV file, which FINALLY makes my video youTube friendly, but this video takes forever to save.
7: I upoload to youTube, normally an overnight process.
8: THEN my blog gets the video.

SCREW YOU, .MOV FILES! SCREW YOU!

I’ll be posting my Go With The Flow video tomorrow.

So, I’m really sorry for not blogging yesterday. I guess I broke my all year streak that I was going for. But it really wasn’t my fault. My mom took my computer out of my room before I got a chance to write it, and it turned midnight before I got it back. So, no breaks. That kind of sucks. I’m gonna try and make this an every day thing, though, no exceptions.

Since I didn’t get to blog yesterday, I’ll make it up to you by sharing something more personal. This is probably a bad example to show my writing with, because this is the first time I’ve ever wrote something like this. It’s less poetry and more prose, but not 100% prose. Also, it won’t mean anything to you or translate over to other people well.. Just so you know, don’t try and figure out what it’s about, because it will only make sense to me. I promise. There’s some parts that might apply to life, but for the most part it’s just things that connected in my head at the time. I wrote this without thinking, really. Anyways, this “poem” is called Non-Stop Congeniality, and it’s about a touchy subject for me, I wrote it last night. That’s all you get.

Before I share my “poem,” though, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you what I’ll be writing either today or tomorrow. I went to my friend Michael’s birthday party, and someone brought rock band. (Sweet!) No drums, which was what I wanted, and I wasn’t gonna try guitar cause I suck at all guitar-based games even though I’m a pretty good guitar player, so I sang. It had “Go With The Flow” by Queens Of The Stone Age, one of my favorite bands, ever. They’re really great. But, anyway. I think I did a good job. We got a video of it, although it’s all of the screen. You can still hear me, though. I’m converting the video into a format that youTube will understand right now. So expect that soon. Here you go for today.

NON-STOP CONGENIALITY
by Andrew

I had misplaced my options and became
stuck with this road
I’ve said it before a hundred
times too low
the number written on my arm
will be giving me ghosts
as the red 3 a.m. throws it’s
off-white glow
all the notes that had broke
this promise switch to anew
a greatest miss, a greatest hit
a figure of you
my pen could never erase your
badly-drawn other half of self-portriat
currents run, though my shining
hint lays away from the flow
a water molecule to drench my head in
to break my bed in, to break my bread in
it’s such a long story to be told
through my glass of the future and the present
your arm by your side mocks
the boat doesn’t rock
the paper doesn’t fold, just contrasts
more bold ink down
down down down to the other side
of that perspective shot of
a guitar that I used to write our baby
a lullaby before it became yours
if I’m ranting I’ll stop
if it’s falling I’ll drop
anything for love
oh, anything, anything for love
I have watched the way that it has
gone for years
the feet fear to take
another feat of nature
beast of nature, a kind of lord of the flies
type of nature
carpet cold, story old
story told to your son to your son and your son
the eyes go plop when they chase the
vault, to those who drop
I’m sorry for wasting this page
but now the goldest of ages is dead
a cable cord to plug my voice in
a dead weight to close the empty space
in my arms with
would that risk losing you
untrue, a glow of interactivity
system for your pleasure
pick up the weather
move it someplace else because my
scribble scrabble dibble dabbles
all the way down the
punctured scary evidence
scary slash sad and a thank you
a hello a goodbye an adieu
a french word for tough luck chump
lucky cussing tongue for a few seconds
I’ll take it back and get a refund
when I’m done, oh how I’d refund
anything or love
oh, anything, anything for love
and it’s red
maybe blue
I love