If Discovery is Daft Punk’s most disco-laden effort, their debut, Homework, is most rooted in hip-hop. The record glows with a youthful rebellion, the beats are fat and grimy, and, in an ideal world, should be played exclusively through a ghetto blaster. Hip-hop’s aesthetic pierces the record; there is just as many boombap beats as there are four-to-the-floor rhythms, putting them a foot above the rest of the French electronic music that was growing in popularity around the time of the album’s inception. The pair even spell out their influences on the track “Teachers”, listing Dr. Dre and George Clinton among the likes of Armand Van Helden and DJ Deeon. It seems, then, that on their adolescent studio work, Daft Punk wear their influences as if they were each sewn on, right next to the embossed patch seen on its front cover.

The introductory single to emerge from Homework was “Da Funk”, a blistering hybrid of acid house and g-funk. Its trenchant beat stomps like King Ghidorah, meanwhile the guttural synthesizer riff has the bark of Cujo. The bounce of the track rumbles the nervous system throughout, especially in the final sector, which introduces a textbook acid-house squeal that acts out fervently, splashing from the speakers. Something so bashful yet imaginative is the mark of a track only the youth would create. Parts of the anatomy of the track were lifted from sooty soul songs that could only be found from crate digging, a hip-hop tradition that dates back to its inception with the likes of the Sugarhill Gang flipping Chic records. Thomas and Guy-Man would also utilise Chic to reach new heights later in their career, bringing their journey full-circle.

The ties to hip-hop run deeper going back a track. “Revolution 909” does not begin until a crowd are disrupted by the police sirens and stoic orders to “stop the music and go home”, illustrating how French house music fans were held under the boot of the government, their raves being shut down under false pretences to delegitimise the culture in the 90s. Aside from an instructional cooking segment on making spaghetti, its music video, depicting a responsible party-goer on the cusp of arrest, further relates to hip-hop’s struggle to be devillainised by the establishment, and is also using peace-shattering beats to translate this message to the ear of people. Today, both dance music and hip-hop have become not just accepted, but have thrived in the mainstream with big-budget gigs and festivals, highlighting just how far they have come from conquering the powers that be that borderline criminalised them.

Homework tackles many subjects throughout its 1 hour 30 minute runtime, yet this does not equate to it being a night-before-the-exam cram job. DP’s notoriously time-consuming creation process originated here, where they spent no more than 8 hours in a week making music, over the course of a half-year. Those precious man-hours thankfully lead to a multi-faceted set of house tracks ranging from the gleeful gospel of “Phoenix” to unquestionably one of the most belligerent moments in Daft Punk’s discography, “Rollin’ ‘n’ Scratchin’”.

On the B-side of the original “Da Funk” 12” lies this 7-minute demon, who makes its return on the album, and drives at speeds rarely seen at NASA. Breathing with only a small selection of components, DP squeeze in a shifting four-to-the-floor drum pattern and glass hi-hats with a monstrous, rage-filled synth that stridently fires off like sustained rounds of ammunition to the chest. This ball of distortion is unquestionably alive, growling louder and ever-violent to an apex, then calming down almost to a stopping point, all before releasing a final convulsion of noise that heaves the track into the thermosphere. “Rollin’ ‘n’ Scratchin’” demonstrates how the duo take the aggressive, harsh sounds seen in hip-hop, implement them into house music, and then throw them into the lion’s den.

Until donning their iconic helmets, the pair visibly brought the meaty urban bounce of hip-hop into the pan of house, stirring in the flavourful relish of disco, and disruptive tang of punk to create a sweet puree to drizzle across the 17 tracks that concoct the record. Daft Punk have stated that the album’s name derives from its humble recording sessions in Thomas’ bedroom, and as a whole, Homework feels like their educational expedition before they would venture into wider, more ambitious LP archetypes. As well as, ironically, the ideal beginner’s guide to house music.

Warp-speeding to the years after Discovery’s release, the sound the two had made was in vogue. Artists like Madonna and David Bowie asked for their preternatural hands in production, which they boldly declined, instead searching for how to redefine themselves. Approaching the winter of 2004, Daft Punk saw fit to completely flip the ethos they had perfected over their first two projects, truly warranting the second half of their label - they were punking against themselves. Their slow and slaved-over construction process was even tossed out for a rigorous six-week space, and fabricating from that misty underbelly was Human After All.

HUMAN AFTER ALL