Re-release the Beast

February 17, 2007 6:07 PM

Sampled by Daft Punk. They've been mentioned here before, sometimes disparagingly. Here, gathered and laid bare for all to see, are a collection of samples (primarily from their album Discovery) the House music duo have used. Depending on your view of them, this may shock or delight you.
posted by tumult (35 comments total)

I've mirrored the files here, in case the main link gets hammered to death.
posted by tumult at 6:08 PM on February 17, 2007

Wow, that's like the whole thing of "Harder Better Faster Stronger".

Kind of like how Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" is heavily sampled from this music.
posted by smackfu at 6:25 PM on February 17, 2007

Geez, did daft punk make any of their own hooks? It looks like all their good stuff was made by other people.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:45 PM on February 17, 2007

Ah, just noticed the "mydreamsareshattered" tag. I'm right there with you on that one.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:49 PM on February 17, 2007

Really nice. I must say that I am surprised by the Beast sample.

It is so clean and futuristic on Daft. They hardly "transformed" it at all.
posted by pwedza at 6:57 PM on February 17, 2007

I'm not entirely shocked, as sampling and remixing are certainly part of the genre. Nonetheless, certain hooks are pretty much taken untouched from the original and just looped--which is a surprise, considering that their heavily-filtered sound always implied at least a fair bit of FX-work for their samples.

I'm impressed (as I always am with sample-based stuff) at the ability to find tunes and isolate those 10-12 seconds that will translate into a great R&B / house / rap / etc. hook. Some of these source recordings were pretty obvious, but there were still many where I listened and thought "Wow, I would've never thought to cut that out and re-work it."

And the "sampling" vs. "theft" and "creative reuse" vs. "lack of originality" flamewars shall commence shortly...
posted by LMGM at 7:07 PM on February 17, 2007

I assume they paid for the privilege of using those hooks.
posted by empath at 7:11 PM on February 17, 2007

smackfu-- that's great. I may try to use that in a dj set :)
posted by empath at 7:12 PM on February 17, 2007

I assume they paid for the privilege of using those hooks.

Must have. Otherwise they'd end up like the verve. Especially since most of the samples are totally obvious.

As an aside, anyone hear the album after discovery? Just about put me to sleep. Real disappointment.
posted by bob sarabia at 7:28 PM on February 17, 2007

Um, I mentioned the Edwin Birdsong bit a few posts up from tehloki...
posted by phrontist at 7:37 PM on February 17, 2007

Holy crap, I knew most of the others... but the Digital Love sample is really unabashed. Daft Punk does it so much better...

On my radio show I try to do little "exposed sample bit" periodically. I'd done daft punk before, but now I've got tons more material... this blog makes it too easy. Great post.
posted by phrontist at 7:42 PM on February 17, 2007

sorry phrontist, I didn't see it when I was scrubbing through the thread.

for anyone who's interested in playing a joke on a friend, I've just now pitch-shifted and applied similar processing to Cola Bottle Baby and recut it with the beginning of Daft Punk's version. the results are pretty amusing.
posted by tumult at 7:47 PM on February 17, 2007 [4 favorites]

I agree, some of their best songs are really very smart slicing with really excellent added stuff – Digital Love, One More Time, Voyager. there's no excuse for the stuff like Robot Rock, though.
posted by tumult at 7:52 PM on February 17, 2007

That's better than the original. Good work.
posted by bob sarabia at 7:53 PM on February 17, 2007

there's no excuse for the stuff like Robot Rock, though.

I respectfully disagree.
posted by pwedza at 8:17 PM on February 17, 2007

I feel with the robot rock stuff it should be labeled as a daft punk remix.. labeling it as their own song is really misleading.
posted by cmicali at 9:29 PM on February 17, 2007

Seems like sampling used to rely on grabbing well-known hooks, so you'd hear the new tune and appreciate what was done with it.

Now, the object seems to be picking up hooks that people (at least in the target audience) don't know, and not going out of your way to point out the source material.

All my DP cd's are a few thousand miles away. Anyone have one handy? Cause if what I was after was trying to get people to appreciate what I'd done with source material, I'd, you know, mention it.
posted by dreamsign at 9:34 PM on February 17, 2007

Personally, after listening to all the original tunes, I think Daft Punk is best when they take a sample and use it to create something with a different sense of purpose from the original. I think nearly all good use of sampling aims for this at least. For me, a good example is the DP track "Superheroes". I'd never have known that it was a Barry Manilow sample without looking through the liner notes, and the end result is quite unlike the original (driving techno-rock vs. copacabana disco).

But when it sounds merely derivative, it's a little disappointing. I think dreamsign has captured what I feel is disappointing about "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".

The wonderful Interstella 5555 makes up for any of the album's shortcomings, IMHO.
posted by timelord at 9:56 PM on February 17, 2007

Oh, and this site is a good source for samples used in some other popular songs (not just daft punk).
posted by timelord at 10:32 PM on February 17, 2007

Wow, no wonder "Human After All" sucked so hard... they tried to do it all themselves.

That being said, i'm still hoping against hope that they'll do something at least half as remarkable as "Discovery" in the future.
posted by ELF Radio at 11:32 PM on February 17, 2007

Well, Daft Punk is playing at my house.
I'll show you the ropes, kid. Show you the ropes.
posted by sparkletone at 12:29 AM on February 18, 2007

The bottom of the samples post links to Daft Punk's official website, and I watched the trailer thingy they said would be there and my first thought was, "Holy shit! Cylon wedding!"

This is serious.

We must defend marriage from being destroyed by Cylons.

I'm writing my Senator first thing in the morning.
posted by sparkletone at 12:55 AM on February 18, 2007

You can't steal ideas, you can only use them. This is a good thing, niet? When I was growing up in the late 70s in the depths of the West Country, the only non-church music I heard was on the BBC and my one local radio station. This was almost entirely Top 40 or other mainstream stuff - I discovered John Peel a little later - so I grew up thinking all the 2-Tone ska music was original.

Cut forward to the young Devonian in the big city, mid-80s, hanging out with new pals who'd lived all their lives in London. One in particular had (has!) an extensive collection of original reggae and ska, something I discovered one evening back at his when I'd said something about The Specials. He promptly put on Dandy Livingston. The shock of hearing something very familiar in its original context made me want to hear more, and there was such a very great deal more.

And then a few years later, a chance remark from a friend that the acoustic guitar on The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds was a straight lift from Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich - who in turn got ideas from Ghanian and Balinese music - and another lifelong love was born.

Hell, even a passing reference in Smash Hits magazine in 1980 that Gary Numan nicked a lot of his imagery from Burroughs and Philip Dick got me into the bookshop and thence off-planet. I've never returned, and I don't miss the old place one bit.

There is nothing dishonest in using someone else's ideas, even wholesale, providing you don't lie about the source. That's where the harm comes. And the Net is so very good about keeping us honest here.

I suppose the original sampled mash-up is the Bible, which has got all sorts in it from all sorts of places. If it's good enough for Jehovah, it's good enough for Daft Punk.
posted by Devonian at 2:24 AM on February 18, 2007 [4 favorites]

Word to the mother. Amen brother!
posted by asok at 3:33 AM on February 18, 2007

Well said, Devonian.
posted by jack_mo at 4:53 AM on February 18, 2007

I thought the Daft Punk does the Charleston video was one of the cooler things I had seen online this week.
posted by Staggering Jack at 9:13 AM on February 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

"There is nothing dishonest in using someone else's ideas, even wholesale, providing you don't lie about the source."-- Devonian

The dishonest part is where you slap a copyright on the derived work and prevent someone else from borrowing borrowed goods.
posted by Nahum Tate at 9:40 AM on February 18, 2007

Staggering Jack: that is amazing!
posted by Turtles all the way down at 10:25 AM on February 18, 2007

I obviously missed the links to the Daft Punk versions, which makes comparing the samples with the DP usages exceedingly difficult.

Or was I supposed to know all of DP's discography before reading the link?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:34 PM on February 18, 2007

Yes you were.
posted by tiny crocodile at 2:17 PM on February 18, 2007

I obviously missed the links to the Daft Punk versions, which makes comparing the samples with the DP usages exceedingly difficult.

Despite not owning a single Daft Punk record, I had no trouble finding many of the songs. Perhaps you've heard of this thing called YouTube? Or if that fails, The Hype Machine?
posted by sparkletone at 2:49 PM on February 18, 2007

Listen also to the audio explanation (in French, sorry, but the play button is the same in any language) of how the the sample in "Aerodynamic" is constructed from "Il Macquillage Lady". It's a nontrivial sample, really. When I first learned about these, I was a little disappointed. But on further consideration Discovery is still my favorite album ever.
posted by nohat at 1:57 AM on February 19, 2007

wow, i am simultaneously saddened and impressed. they do rip off good chunks of these songs, but they do it so damn well.
posted by crawfishpopsicle at 6:30 PM on February 19, 2007

I posted Interstella 5555 to MetaChat a while back.
posted by Eideteker at 8:35 PM on February 22, 2007

If you don't know the DP songs, I just posted a quick video compilation of the samples: HERE
posted by tombola at 2:23 PM on February 24, 2007