Is Daft Punk's "Discovery" supposed to be ironic?

i think the "straight" house productions ground the record enough to make the "ironic" productions "serious", whatever all those scarequoted words mean to you

Because the thing is that this thing that looks like irony has been in music for a long time. What it more closely resembled to me, from the late 90s to now, was a costume party. Yes, there's something of the original sense of "irony" in the idea of playing dress-up -- it's no fun to dress up the same clothes you wear every day -- but it's not the contemporary sense of irony, not a sneery or a bad-faith irony or a "hahaha we don't really mean this" irony. When you dress up in a costume the only thing you "mean" is, well, the simple pleasure of dressing up and having fun and everyone being entertained.

This goes way back, in lots of forms that aren't even very dress-up. No one calls the Beatles' "Piggies" ironic, because it's a moot point: "Piggies" is just fun and goofy. No one calls the Television Personalities ironic because they were earnestly offering you something enjoyable, too. No one calls Afrika Bambaataa or George Clinton's stage shows ironic, do they?

Same for Daft Punk. They play dress-up, yes: they dress up as cutesy outer-space house robots, both sonically and, like, literally. They play the over-the-top game; they pick sounds and formats that lots of people think of as decrepit cheese, and they try to reanimate them and just pour themselves into them so earnestly that you're a little surprised to suddenly remember why they exist in the first place. That's not strictly "irony" in the modern sense, and even if it is I'm not sure "irony" is a very good word for trying to describe it. It's not irony or kitsch but something else that I find a lot harder to describe.

Sorry, I lack the ability to communicate my point clearly >_<

nabisco's response was of the sort I was looking for (going further than "yes"/"no"/"die fucker")

Yeah, it's not just "nostalgia." Doing Norman Rockwell paintings in 2003 would be "nostalgia" -- what Daft Punk do would be more akin to a visual artist that takes the Rockwell aesthetic gets inside it, deforms and elaborates it and represents it in new ways. Actually, a better art reference: Daft Punk do for their formats what Roy Lichtenstein did with comic art? (My art history's not good enough for me to be really confident about that, but I think it works.)

The biggest source of this sort of thing in the 90s was, I think, the whole "retro-futurism" vibe coming off of bands like Stereolab -- not just saying "oh how cute remember these old aesthetics" but rearranging and recombining them and actively redemonstrating how they functioned and what was valuable about them.

Or perhaps they're just benefitting from the old maxim - a fool may appear wise if he remains silent - and we are all thinking about this far harder than it really merits.

When this album came out I was reminded of this great 80s flick called "Electric Dreams", that was played thousands of times on HBO during the Reagan Administration. A young architect's computer, Edgar (voice of Bud Cort), comes to life (as usual whenever you spill soda on an electrical appliance) and vies with his owner for the love of the cello player next door (Virginia Madsen), learning about love and wooing her with the music the computer composes for her. In 1984 what was the sound of a computer making love? Well, it sounded like Boy George and Culture Club (Love is Love, The Dream). And what did a computer making love sound like in 2001- a little like Daft Punk.

I don't think we've gotten to that question yet, Millar. If you want a list of all the things Daft Punk are doing to recontextualize the stuff that's supposedly "ironic" I could listen through Discovery and write one; I don't think I could do the same with a Creed record, and besides I can't think of anyone who would claim Creed are reworking anything in the first place. Anyway with Daft Punk it's not "repackaged slightly different," it's actively about picking up different aesthetics and turning them over and seeing how they run -- like I said I could try and list "evidence" of that, but if you don't think there is any I'm not sure I could convince you.

I think in most cases DP is nonironic because they are either making straight up dance traxxx (too functional to be ironic) or getting all 1979 space-age with complete reverence for the original styles and settings albeit updated (lichtensteined) with modern technique. There are plenty of other artists in a similar vein nowadays and I don't think irony even enters into the picture.

and why didn't they tour it do we know ?
surely the best record never to be toured *at all*.

explain please. this is not enough, too vague. nostalgia relates simply to the past. this is extremely confusing piefox, please clarify. how can an album which looks back to a previous era with affection not be nostalgic? this is baffling to say the least.

It's not nostalgia nor is it irony, and I like the idea that there's not a word for it. What I get is the feeling I had as a kid at the Magic Kingdom, after baking in the sun waiting in lines all day, euphoric throughout, and then watching the Main Street Electrical Parade, when it's finally dark and cooler, and the lights & music project a different euphoria: it's all over, you're going home soon, things won't be magical tomorrow. That's "Superheroes" to me.

it's both of those things surely, not exclusively, or with any of the implied disparagement that gets attached to those concepts

thread is an interesting time capsule. I don't get the need to define irony so narrowly here, or to treat it as a dirty word. or the need to justify what DP is doing in futurist/progressive terms (feels v brit music press) to defend it from accusations of revivalism (clearly the worst thing music could be back then)

the album name could still be a pun though. disco? very!

https://media.s-bol.com/NxEXg9Ek03Y8/550x553.jpg

^^That album was in fact nicknamed "Disco, very!" by the members of ELO.

Well, I think the Disneyland comparison is supremely OTM, DP/Discovery as an impossible, manufactured utopia that doesn't purport to be a reality so much as it requires a suspension of disbelief. The trick of their trade is to manipulate or seduce you into checking your skepticism.

So it's easy to understand their attraction to forms that are devoid of cynicism, or mutually incompatible. LRD "Darkdancer" comes to mind as an album from that time which employed unfashionable (then) retro influences to a similar effect

They don’t really sample or evoke well known songs so I the nostalgia factor of “hey, remember this?” is missing imho. It’s also clearly done with love for a certain mood and era, so I’d say the “irony” isn’t there either. I’d rather describe “Discovery” as an homage.

i'm a bit confused as to why someone would think of Discovery as being "ironic". Then again the landscape in 2003 was very different to today.

if anyone is confused by the premise of this thread, keep in mind I was 15 years old when I started it

not an excuse