Daft Punk: "Harder Better Faster Stronger" Video
Related Videos
Daft Punk: "Alive 2007" (LIVE)
Check out the live version of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" directed by Oliver Gondry shot by fans at the tour in Brooklyn on August 9.
The Juan Maclean: "Give Me Every Little Thing"
"It's been a bit of a sore spot," laughs Juan Maclean, "sitting on this album and seeing this robot stuff pop up all over the place. I have serious robot credentials that go back years and years. Like, a decade! But Daft Punk beat me to the punch." He may be joking, but the man's right. If anyone's earned the right to call their debut album "Less Than Human" and imagine a love triangle consisting of a man, a woman and the man's gay robot friend (as in "Shining Skinned Friend"), it's Maclean. He was guitarist and synth player with acclaimed but obscure, gonzo electro-punk band Six Finger Satellite, who began formulating their blend of rigidly mechanised disco beats, oddly sumptuous synth melodies and razor-shredded guitar work in the early 90s. The brutish but groovy result suggested a cross between Devo, Kraftwerk and Big Black. Then, America was mired in grunge, the famous French robots were still in short pants and the "punk-funk revival" was in the unimaginable future. Six Finger Satellite were just too far ahead of their time and perished accordingly. With "Less Than Human" Maclean has created a precision-tuned rekindling of his love affair with everything from Kraftwerk to Juan Atkins and Derrick May, Funkadelic to Giorgio Moroder and Lipps Inc, DAF to Talking Heads and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. It's full of tics (sin drums, cow bells, Bootsy Collins bass lines, Moog Liberation motifs) borrowed from dance music history, but refuses to engage with retroism, nostalgia or any notion of "the classic." Opener "AD2003" tracks back to Kraftwerk via Orbital, buoyed up by bubbles of percolating glitch. "Give Me Every Little Thing" rewinds through Underworld and Talking Heads en route to Studio 54. "Tito's Way" contrasts acid-house synth squelches and rave whistles with clattering, tribal percussion. There's a constant, though. Even the LP's euphoric epic "Dance With Me," is poignantly subdued, touched by a melancholy that reflects Maclean's own world view. "It doesn't seem incongruous to me to have a lot of that stuff in there," he says of the album's sadness, "because I made a big effort to make an album, rather than a collection of tunes with just one good track that everybody knows. So I never really set out to say, "this is a song that will played for the dance floor," or whatever. "When I started on it, I don't think I had any pre-conceived notions at all, except that I knew I'd always be operating under the same aesthetic principles that I'd held in making music my whole life."
Daft Punk: "Electroma" (movie trailer)
Daft Punk's Electroma is an odyssey of two robots (played by Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich) who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human.
Best New Music: Daft punks and bluegrass pioneers
The Download Crew checks out Daft Punk, DJ Zeph & Azeem, Mice Parade, Dock Boggs, and the Stanley Brothers.
"Dave Chappelle's Block Party" trailer
Shot on location in downtown Brooklyn, NY, the film features the brilliant comedy stylings of Dave Chappelle, along with one-time-only performances by Kanye West, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, Dead Prez, Jill Scott, and The Roots, among others. Inspired in part by the 1973 documentary "Wattstax," the film was directed by Academy Award-winning Michel Gondry, with cinematography by Ellen Kuras.
Cutting long stock on saw horses
In this video, John Spier, Block Island, Rhode Island, contractor, shows his method for cutting 16-ft. 2x6s on the job site. To find out how the sawhorses are made, read John's article, "Faster, Stronger Horses," in the February/March 2005, issue of Fine Homebuilding (#169).
The Presets: "Girl and the Sea"
With enough range that they'll appeal to fans of class acts like Nine Inch Nails, The Faint, Soft Cell, and Daft Punk, The Presets' sound is equal parts invention and dance-floor friendliness while retaining a special flavor of their own.
The Download Music crew highlights its favorite songs and albums from the past year, including releases from Kanye West, Spoon, and Lee Hazlewood. Visit our Best of 2007 page.
Submerse UK Punx first video. The track Operation is featured on the album 'Do As I Say - Not As I Do' for more info see www.myspace.com/submerse. UK 4-piece punk band set to have crowds chanting oi oi oi at a venue near you. These socio political punks thought it was time to get themselves on screen so made a DIY video for one of their most popular tracks.
Foals are a five-piece dance-rock band currently living in and native to the town of Oxford, England. Check out the video for "Cassius" as heard in the album "Antidotes" on Sub Pop Records.
