Daft Punk

Take a measure of well-blended acid and progressive house music, add a dash of techno and funk, season with disco and ambient, add a pinch of hip-hop and indie rock, garnish with synth pop and voilà! — you'd think Daft Punk's success is simply a matter of getting the right recipe and getting it right. Yet it's the result of an extraordinary imagination, of serendipity and sonic genius. After all, only a master chef could have added that kitschy and self-satirising vocoder in "Around the World"!

Live tracks and remixes dominate Daft Punk's Next Steps.

When listening to Discovery — released four years after 1997's Homework — it would seem that the duo changed the rules and were laying the groundwork for a whole new game. Clearly, Daft Punk don't believe in looking back — as many an astonished fan discovered in 1995 when the wildly experimental Human After All dropped, with its robotic loops layered over feverish, hypnotic grooves: here, among a bunch of blistering remixes, we include a live version of the title track sandwiched between "Superheroes" and "Rock'n Roll".

Forget the full-on robot disguises for a second . . . Daft Punk's joyous pillaging of progressive house, Eurodisco, electro, filtered funk, and sweat-swabbed techno is pleasurable enough on its own, transcending any cynical claims of gimmickry. The Parisian duo's modern dance classic of a debut, Homework, is especially relevant today, predicting the emergence of electro-house years before the sub-genre became a buzzword. And then there's the considerable crossover appeal of Discovery and Human After All, including the chipmunk chorus line of "Technologic" (sampled by Busta Rhymes on the hit "Touch It"), the glorious peak hour anthem "One More Time" (clearly influenced by the Stardust single "Music Sounds Better With You", which one-half of Daft Punk helped produce), and the futuristic love song "Digital Love".