Human After All

Human After All
Studio album by Daft Punk
Released	March 14, 2005 (2005-03-14)
Recorded	September 13 – November 9, 2004[1] Daft House (Paris, France)
Genre	Electronic rock, house
Length	45:33
Label	Toshiba-EMI (Japan) VJCP 68735 (CD) Virgin V2996 (UK 2LP) CDV2996 (UK CD) 63562 (U.S. CD)
Producer	Daft Punk, Cédric Hervet, Gildas Loaëc
Daft Punk chronology
Daft Club (2003) Human After All (2005) Musique Vol. 1 1993–2005 (2006)
Singles from Human After All
"Robot Rock" Released: April 11, 2005 "Technologic" Released: June 14, 2005 "Human After All" Released: October 31, 2005 "The Prime Time of Your Life" Released: June 17, 2006

Human After All is the third studio album by French duo Daft Punk, first released on March 14, 2005 internationally and a day later in the United States. With it, Daft Punk applies minimalism and rock music to their French house music style. It received mixed reviews noting its reported six-week creation, which is particularly short compared to previous albums Discovery and Homework. The album was released with the Copy Control protection system in some regions. It was their last studio album released under Virgin Records.

Background

The Japan edition of the album artwork features a quote from Daft Punk stating: "We believe that Human After All speaks for itself." At the time of release, the duo refused to be interviewed; they felt that using the media to explain the album would run contrary to the album's theme regarding the media as an oppressive force. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo later felt that choosing to be silent was the worst decision they had ever made.^[2]

Daft Punk considered Human After All to be their favorite of the three studio albums they had created at that point, and regard it as "pure improvisation."^[3] The album's brief creation and minimal production had been decided upon beforehand as counterpoint to their previous album. As Thomas Bangalter stated, "We were definitely seduced at the time by the idea of doing the opposite of Discovery." He compared the deliberately unpolished record to "a stone that's unworked."^[4] Human After All was created primarily with two guitars, two drum machines, a vocoder and one eight-track machine.^[5] Furthermore it was produced in two weeks and mixed in four, a session in sharp contrast to their older material.^[6]

Bangalter has stated that the album is an attempt to discover where human feelings reside in music.^[7] He later commented that "we felt like the third album was about this feeling of either fear or paranoia... [The record is] not something intended to make you feel good".^[8] Bangalter felt that Human After All and the film Daft Punk's Electroma are both "extremely tormented and sad and terrifying looks at technology, yet there can be some beauty and emoting from it."^[9] He acknowledged the perceived mechanical quality of the record, but felt that it expressed "the dance between humanity and technology".^[5]

As de Homem-Christo noted, "Every album we’ve done is tightly linked with our lives. [...] The internal, personal stuff Thomas went through during Human After All made it closer to where he was at the time".^[10] When questioned on the positive reaction to the use of the tracks in Daft Punk's Alive 2006/2007 tour, Bangalter expressed that, "Human After All was the music we wanted to make at the time we did it. We have always strongly felt there was a logical connection between our three albums, and it's great to see that people seem to realize that when they listen now to the live show."^[11]

The cover image of Human After All features the Daft Punk logo displayed on a television screen. Each single from the album ("Robot Rock", "Technologic, "Human After All" and "The Prime Time of Your Life") features a cover with a different image on a similar screen. This television theme is also expressed with tracks from the album, including "On/Off" and "Television Rules the Nation". Bangalter cited the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell as an inspiration for the record.^[2]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[12]
Blender	[13]
Entertainment Weekly	C[14]
The Guardian	[15]
Mojo	[16]
NME	7/10[17]
Pitchfork Media	4.9/10[18]
Q	[19]
Rolling Stone	[20]
Spin	C–[21]

Human After All received generally mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 57, based on 28 reviews.^[22] In his review for Blender magazine, Simon Reynolds said that Discovery's blissful and "open-hearted" music is replaced by "an archly ironic dance-rock that feels desultory and numb verging on autistic."^[13] Q magazine felt that it lacks the "fun" of Daft Punk's previous work.^[19] Barry Walters of Rolling Stone said that the duo generally "repeats rather than elaborates its riffs", and that they "exaggerate their band's own robotic tendencies here, much to the detriment of its grooves."^[20] Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian called the album "a joyless collection of average ideas stretched desperately thin."^[15] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice graded the album a "dud",^[23] indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought."^[24]

In a positive review, Matthew Weiner of Stylus Magazine stated, "it's the same story, track after track, willfully mistaking alternation for variation, intensification for development and dynamics. In other words, a shining example of pop songcraft in the 21st century."^[25] Mojo magazine said that it "strips out the most flamboyant frills to create a more incisive sound."^[16] Human After All was nominated for the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album.^[26]

Release and promotion

When the album was leaked on the Internet several months before release, fans speculated that it was a fake designed to foil online filesharing.^[27] Spin recalled that the official album release was ill timed, as it occurred after the end of the "major-label electronica movement" of the 1990s, but before the rise of independent dance labels such as DFA Records and Ed Banger.^[28]

The Alive 2006/2007 tour, which featured tracks from Human After All, caused people to reconsider what they felt about the album. Pedro Winter, Daft Punk's manager at the time, stated, "When we put out Human After All, I got a lot of bad feedback, like, 'It's so repetitive. There's nothing new. Daft Punk used to be good.' Then they came back with the light show, and everyone shut their mouths... People even apologized, like, 'How could we have misjudged Daft Punk?' The live show changed everything. Even if I'm part of it, I like to step back and admire it. Me, I cried."^[29] The first single "Robot Rock" received moderate attention, reaching #32 in the UK and #15 on the U.S. dance charts, but was not a major hit. The second single "Technologic" only hit #40 in the UK but did considerably better in airplay. The track has also been featured on The O.C. and in an iPod commercial. A sample of the track has also been used as the chorus for Busta Rhymes' single "Touch It".

Track listing

• "Robot Rock" features sampled portions of "Release the Beast" performed by Breakwater.

Personnel

• Daft Punk – guitars, drum machines, sampling, vocoders, keyboards, vocals, programming, production
• Cédric Hervet – production coordination
• Gildas Loaëc – production coordination
• Nilesh "Nilz" Patel – mastering

Remix album

Human After All: Remixes cover

Human After All: Remixes was released on March 29, 2006 exclusively for Japan. It features numerous remixes previously unavailable on CD in a limited pressing of 3,000 copies. A limited edition of the album included a set of Daft Punk Kubricks. The album implements a Copy Control system.

1. "Robot Rock" (Soulwax remix) – 6:31
2. "Human After All" (SebastiAn remix) – 4:48
3. "Technologic" (Peaches No Logic remix) – 4:38
4. "The Brainwasher" (Erol Alkan's Horrorhouse dub) – 6:05
5. "The Prime Time of Your Life" (Para One remix) – 3:52
6. "Human After All" ("Guy-Man After All" Justice remix) – 4:01
7. "Technologic" (Digitalism's Highway to Paris remix) – 6:01
8. "Human After All" (Alter Ego remix) – 9:26
9. "Technologic" (Vitalic remix) – 5:27
10. "Robot Rock" (Daft Punk Maximum Overdrive mix) – 5:54
    • This song was previously titled "Robot Rock (Maximum Overdrive)".

In 2009 an unofficial remix album was released onto the internet called Remix After All where blogs asked their favorite producer to remix the song they were paired up with. Remix After All was made in response to Human After All: Remixes due to its limited availability and lack of remix coverage for all of Human After All's tracks.^[30]

1. "Human After All" (The Disco Villains remix)  – 6:11
2. "The Prime Time of Your Life" (Tits & Clits remix)  – 5:56
3. "Robot Rock" (Immuzikation remix)  – 4:38
4. "Steam Machine" (The Company Kang remix)  – 3:29
5. "Make Love" (Chew Fu and Substantial Small Room Sax Fix)  – 4:49
6. "The Brainwasher" (Melee Beats remix)  – 4:16
7. "On/Off" (The Noizy Kidz Daft Zapping remix)  – 3:20
8. "Television Rules the Nation" (Dirty Disco Youth remix) – 3:42
9. "Technologic" (Kids at the Bar remix)  – 4:18
10. "Emotion" (Werewolf by Night remix)  – 6:13

Charts

As of May 2013, Human After All has sold 125,000 copies in the US.^[31]

References

External links

• Human After All at Discogs (list of releases)
• Human After All: Remixes at Discogs (list of releases)