Comments on: DAFT PUNK – “One More Time” https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time Lollards in the high church of low culture Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:04:49 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: swanstep https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-669118 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:04:49 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-669118 @Tim. Nice try, but I don’t myself think that there’s a huge difference a B or C section that jams on a drone, as it were, before getting back to the interesting stuff, and a section that scats around without much of a beat for the same period. The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again more or less breaks down to that synth/organ figure for an ungodly length of time before the song explodes back to life. That case kind of splits the difference between OMT and LMF, and suggests to me that there’s really no real difference to speak of. Rather, this is the same basic trick being worked in different ways.

@Tanned and rested…: I certainly love all the orgiastic/ecstatic side of dance music you emphasize, but I can’t say that for me OMT sucessfully plugs into that at all! I like Daft Punk quite a lot but this was a track I’d always skip over (after a few listens) on Discovery because it was too boring. Forget all your suffering and redemption, what OMT really suggests is the classic, unflattering take on a lot of indifferent dance/techno music – it’s like listening to a washing machine. In OMT we seem to be stuck on a wash cycle forever, then we sit there on soak for ungodly long, then the wash cycle starts up again. One More Load.

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By: Chris https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-669093 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:17:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-669093 That’s awesome, Daft Punk are amazing. They feature in this top albums of the decade here http://bit.ly/5O0RYX

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By: Tim https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-669090 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:24:44 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-669090 Swanstep: in “Light My fire” isn’t the “vamping” you talk about more to di with continuation than disruption? If you are happily grooving to “OMT” and that distended breakdown arrives, it’s not easy to know what to do; if you’re groovin’ to “LMF” you can keep groovin’ right on through the whole of the vampy jam, can’t you? The vamping surely resolves when the opening keyboard figure comes back but it’s not such a relief, is it?

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-669075 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:22:33 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-669075 Well, I’d say suffering-redemption was a pretty basic lyrical trope in TONS of disco — and what’s significant about that is that it’s simultaneously a SILLY AND JOKEY reference to gospel and religion and seeing the light, orgasm as divine revelation etc and of course at the same UTTERLY SERIOUS:. It means tension-release but it acknowledges it in the context of a lifestyle choice that’s at once perilous and urgent and serious about pleasure — “last night a DJ saved my life”

So I think Tom’s write up catches this sensibility and transfers the metaphor to a dance track that doesn’t explicit riff off evangelical lyrical tropes very neatly — camp as a mask for currently impossible seriousness; teasing co-option as a means of liberation etc…

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By: swanstep https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-669072 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:09:59 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-669072 @tanned rested…: OK, maybe I took the original write-up too seriously, but this labelling of things as ‘suffering’, ‘redemption’, and so on seems utterly fanciful to me.

There are plenty of great songs over the years that have wandered off into a long B or C section. One can, if one likes describe any song with that sort of structure as a ‘philosophical meditation on suffering and redemption’, i.e., because of the anticipation built into that long B or C section, but honestly what would be the point of doing so? Classic example: Doors, Light my fire. It vamps forever on a couple of chords lifted from Coltrane’s version of ‘My favorite things’, before finally coming back to that bizarre, Bach-like opening flourish and only then launching us into another Morrison verse and Chorus. (It’s crazy, wonderful stuff – nothing else has ever sounded like it.) One could always describe Light my Fire as a ‘philosophical meditation on suffering and redemption’ because of that vamping/Coltrane section, but it’s hard to see what that would really illuminate. But maybe I’m just not following something here.

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-668467 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:00:27 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-668467 silly swanstep:

A: “people just flail around during the long breakdown looking as if they’re not…really…sure what they’re supposed to do” = suffering
B: “just as you think… that maybe the beat won’t return, it does” = redemption
C: a meditation = exploration WITHOUT WORDS, so posting up the lyrics gives less than half the story
D: form follows function = the track is about nothing if not rhythmic teasing, hence the review teases the (over-serious) reader

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By: will https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-668465 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:06:10 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-668465 Great pop track but not one that works on a dancefloor. I’ve tried playing it out on more than one occasion and people just flail around during the long breakdown looking as if they’re not…really…sure what they’re supposed to do.

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By: swanstep https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-668444 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:35:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-668444 it’s a philosophical meditation on the nature of human suffering and redemption
Good god. Here are the lyrics:
One more time
One more time
[One more time we’re gonna celebrate
Oh yeah all right don´t stop the dancing]x6
One more time
You know I’m just feeling
Celebration
Tonight
Celebrate
Don’t wait too late
You know
You don’t stop
You can’t stop
We’re gonna celebrate
One more time
One more time
One more time
Celebration
You know we’re gonna do it right
Tonight
Hey
Just feeling
Music’s got me feeling the need
Need
Yeah
Come on all right
We’re gonna celebrate
[One more time
Music’s got me feeling so free
We’re gonna celebrate
Celebrate and dance so free]x11

There’s barely half an idea there, let alone any attempt to meditate on anything, explore lines of reasoning, and so on.

And theme and variation, and ABA song structure (which One More Time stretches out) has nothing to do with ‘metaphysics of evil’ stuff. Sorry, this is a dreadful piece, way below Tom’s usual standard.

As for the song… I thought it was the 3rd or 4th best track on Discovery, which was a pretty good album. It’s a fun track, the bass drum is distinctively late, which shouldn’t work but does, which I like, but there’s just not enough to the track either musically or lyrically for it to be really exciting, certainly not in the conceptual way that Tom describes. Put another way, I don’t think it’s a patch in general joyfulness terms on Kool and the Gang’s Celebration (which it slightly resembles), and frankly *that* would be an odd choice for fave of its decade. It’s not really a contender, and I’d say the same thing about One More Time.

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By: Brian https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/comment-page-1#comment-668246 Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:44:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733#comment-668246 One of my favorite blurbs in the P4K book. Thanks for posting it! Happy new year!

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