A (21:24)
Now, what's cool about the syncopation in Veritas Quill is that not only are we getting push syncopation in the bass playing just before the downbeat of the kick drum, the melody is also pushed, but it starts just after the kick drum, not before it. This results in these concentrated groups of syncopation, where we hear the bass, then the kick Then the melody in rapid succession with no two elements exactly synced. So instead of them starting all together like this, they play in rapid succession like this. Like Voyager. This is for me, a big reason why Veridis Quo is so hypnotically addictive. The gaps between one instrument are always filled by another, creating a kind of interlocking puzzle that our brains can't quite settle into. And so despite the track having a highly repetitive overall structure, it's this subtle but constant unpredictability that makes it seem like it could go on indefinitely, extending Voyager's sense of drifting through infinite space. It's an aspect Thoma acknowledged directly in an interview with the Face, describing Viridis Quo as the loss of time and reality and space. And time, space, continuum, a void. Like Voyager, the title Veritas Quo also ties into the song sense of an endless journey, albeit in a more abstract way. It's a play on the Latin phrase Quo Vadis, meaning where are you going? An open ended philosophical question that mirrors the song's introspective, contemplative and almost meditative quality. However, there's also a more light hearted reading of the title because Verdis Quo sounds a lot like Very Disco, and if you flip very Disco around the same way Quo Vadis is reversed, you get disco very. Put those two words together and they form the word Discovery. It's actually a play on words Daft Punk intended to use in the live action film. They once planned around the album where the title sequence was to have the words very disco appear at opposite sides of the screen, only to cross each other and reveal the album title Discovery. And speaking of that abandoned live action film, Discovery continues with a sequence of tracks that contain the strongest artifacts of that idea, where the cinematic ending of Short Circuit clearly sets the stage for the story of the subsequent song Face to Face. I'll explain exactly how that happens right after the break. This episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. A family member of mine was trying to buy glasses online recently and it turned into a whole ordeal. There are so many styles that it's honestly overwhelming and you're just staring at these tiny pictures, trying to guess what'll actually look good on your face. Then the prices hit and it feels kind of wild to spend hundreds of dollars on something you're not even sure is going to work. But Warby Parker comes completely flipped. The experience. They've simplified everything. Quality, price, selection, all of it. And their virtual try on is surprisingly accurate. Such a game changer right now. Buy one prescription pair and get 20% off any additional prescription pairs at warbyparker.com/ that's 20% off additional prescription pairs when you go to warbyparker.com dissect. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, I teased the narrative connection between Discovery's next pair of tracks, starting with the high octane synth heavy jam Short Circuit. The first minute and a half of Short Circuit upholds this funky and frenetic synth jam, but exactly halfway through the track something dramatic happens as the staccato synth stabs give way to sustained wobbly minor chords that have an almost forlorn quality, a contrast from the driving mechanical feel of the song's first. We might suspect this contrasting section to be a bridge, a needed breather, before returning to the turbocharged synths that bring the song to a roaring finale. However, that never happens. The rest of the song remains in this new section, and rather than a climax, the opposite happens. The entire track begins to slowly decompose. Daft Punk create this effect through gradual down sampling, which reduces the resolution of the audio by lowering the sample rate or bit depth so the sound becomes grainy and degraded. The music gradually loses clarity and fidelity, like a machine powering down the literal aftermath of a short circuit unfolding in real time. In an interview with the Face, Thomas described Short Circuit as having a kind of drunkenness feel, where the groove is degenerating, blurred and getting more digital, like your CD player isn't working anymore. Thoma would later relate this with the imagined narrative that the album would score in their abandoned live action film, saying it's the state where you become unconscious, the robots become unconscious, and after you regain your consciousness you are more face to face with reality. Discoveries. Face to Face belongs in a museum. As I teased at the top of the episode, the song is an absolute masterclass in sampling, bringing together three of the best sample based producers of all time in Thoma Gimon and the song's collaborator, Todd Edwards. As you might remember from our Homework episode, Edwards is an incredibly influential garage house producer from New Jersey, known for his intricate micro sampling technique where he splices tiny millisecond samples into complex musical mosaics. Daft Punk name checked Edwards on Homework's teachers and even extended a formal invitation to collaborate with him on the album. That didn't pan out, but the three reconnected after Homework's release, with Thomas and Gimon flying out to Edwards hometown of New Jersey to begin work on what would become Face to Face. As Edwards told Ben Cardew for His book on Discovery. Him, Thomant and Gimon mostly hung out that first day, but that was enough to inspire Edwards to go home that night and binge sample 70 different chops to work with. The next day. He presented these samples to Daft Punk. And according to Edwards, Thomas and Gimon matched him, creating up to 70 sample chops of their own. This catalog of up to 140 samples would become the song's reservoir of source material. Thomas sat at the keyboard and altered the pitch of every sample so they were in the same key. Then they looped a simple drumbeat and began throwing samples at the wall, seeing what would stick. The end result was a complex amalgamation of some 40 sample fragments drawn from roughly 25 different sources. Most of the sample fragments are less than a second long, and because none of them were officially credited, it's been a decades long mission for the most dedicated Daft Punk fans to identify them all. Thankfully for us, they've all been found. Or so we think. And so, with massive gratitude to everyone who put in the work to uncover them, I'd like to now track them one by one, starting with the song's main loop. Now, as we begin tracking face to face samples, I'm going to tease something up front. There's something every one of them has in common. I'll reveal what that is at the end, but see if you can figure it out before I do. Alright, so let's start with the song's backbone, the drum loop, which is created from a sample of Herbie Band's 1979 song Just Go Daz. They take just two beats from this passage and pitch them down. This becomes layered beneath an original drum beat created on the Linn drum machine. Getting this final result, This rhythm section is fleshed out with a guitar part that's pulled from Electric Light Orchestra's 1975 track Evil Woman. The guitar crunches are spliced up to create this pattern. And now let's hear this sequence over the drums. This foundational guitar part is layered with another, this time made from fragments pulled from Firefall's 1982 track Body and Soul. Individual plucks are sliced out and retuned to create this sequence. There's also a tiny but important guitar sample taken from this passage of Carrie Lucas 1979 song Sometimes a Love Goes Wrong. From this, they slice out just this pitch down fragment. Now let's hear these guitars with the drums, first on their own, then combined with the main guitar part. I mean, come on, how cool does this sound already? Now the Gaps between the guitars are filled with a variety of samples, the first of which sounds like this. This is created by four total samples. The first is from the Alan Parsons Project's 1982 song Silence and I. Here. They chop out and pitch up this splice. This is joined with a sample from The Doobie Brothers 1974 song. It keeps you running from this. They slice out this fragment. Finally, another fragment is pulled from Steppenwolf's Everybody's Next One. And now the pitch matched chop together. All three of these chops sound like this. This is followed by a sample from another Alan Parsons song off the same project, Old and Wise. Now here's the pitch chop. Put this together with the other three and we get this. Let's hear this with the drums first on its own, then join with the samples we've uncovered so far. All right, so we just need three more samples to fill out this main loop, beginning with Dave Mason's 1974 rendition of all along the Watchtower. Now the pitch down chop. This is combined with the sample from Poco's 1974 song Faith in the Families. And the pitch down slice Together, the two samples sound like this. This is joined with one remaining but very crucial sample pulled from Logan and Messina's 1971 track house at Pooh Corner, back to the days of Christopher Bob. Now the pitched up chop. We'll add this to the previous two samples and we get this. Now let's hear it with drums. Then slot it in with the rest of our recreation. And with that, we've completed a basic recreation of Face To Face's main loop. I hope this somewhat tedious breakdown gave you a sense of just how intricate and skillful this kind of micro sampling truly is. At the same time, I must acknowledge that the breakdown we just did is in many ways incredibly misleading, because my reconstruction stands on the shoulders of a collective, decades long effort by fans who painstakingly uncover these sample fragments piece by piece of. And even then, the ease with which I can now recreate this sequence using modern tools undermines just how difficult it must have been to create in the first place. When Todd Edwards says they started with over 100 samples, I believe him. Because not every splice is going to work. And you can only imagine how many iterations it took before arriving at the final seamless sonic collage. This loop is an extraordinary musical achievement crafted by three of the most important figures in electronic music coming together at the peak of their powers. Now I gave Face to face main loop. All that praise and I haven't even acknowledged what is perhaps the most impressive part of the sequence, because not only is it a display of virtuosic sampling at the highest level, Daft Punk and Todd Edwards embedded a lyrical sequence within this loop, one that, if you haven't already heard, it will be impossible to unhear once it's pointed out to you. According to Edwards, the idea for this lyrical sequence and eventually the theme of the song came spontaneously from that Kenny Loggins sample we just heard Back to the Days of Christopher Robin and Pooh. Christopher Robin here is pulled from the longer lyric Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh. However, when they added it to the loop they were working on, they suddenly heard it a different way. Edwards said, quote, then one of the samples was saying Christopher Robin, but it sounded like it was saying face to Face. So that became the idea of Face to Face. It seemed like that was going to be the title. With this in mind, take another listen to the loop and see if you can hear the words face to face Now. It's pretty cool, right? And clearly Daft Punk and Edwards ran with the idea because not only can you hear that recontextualized sample saying face to face now, you can also hear lyrics in the other vocal samples in the sequence. Check this out. Hear anything? I'll play it again, and this time listen for the words you are combined. We get the phrase you are face to face now. But there's actually more to it than this because there's one last sample in the passage we haven't talked about yet, one that's only played every eighth measure. It's taken from another Electric Light Orchestra track, 1974's Can't Get It Out Of My Head. The full lyric here is, they don't envy me. But the sample chop starts in the middle of Envy on the V sound. This transforms it to sound like With Me. So the full lyrical sequence spread across the eight measure loop turns out to be, you are face to face now with me. I mean, so cool. Now. Face to Face continues with a B section where Daft Punk and Edwards create a new contrasting loop with another handful of sample splices. Let's listen to the loop, then I'll break down the samples. All right, let's quickly track the sample fragments in this collage, starting with another Loggins and Messina Song, 1974's Be Free. First the original track, then the pitched up chop. This is combined with the chop from Deborah Washington's 1978 track the Letter. Together, the two samples are sequenced like this. This is followed by two more samples. First this chop from Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg's 1978 song Tell Me To My Face. Then another chop from Kerry Lucas's Sometimes a Love Goes Wrong. Sequenced together, the two sound like this and now join with the others. Next, a guitar chop from Boz Scragg's 1980 song you got Some Imagination. This is followed by a quick splice from the previous With Me sample. Then a chop from another Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg song, Lahona Luna. Finally, another chop used in the previous loop, the R from ur. Now let's put them together to create the second half of the loop. And now the full B section loop, first on its own, then with drums, Now with every other repetition, there is an additional sample added to the tail end of the loop, and it's another vocal chop that gets repurposed to mean something else. The vocal comes from another Alan Parsons Project song, which is the same source as most of the other vocal chops in the track, so it seems clear they are using Alan Parsons as the quote unquote lead singer. This one's pulled from 1982's Old and Wise. The original lyric is there are shadows surrounding me. The chop is a fragment of the word shadows. This is combined with a chop from another Doobie Brothers song, 1973's South City Midnight Lady. And now together with the vocal chop. So admittedly, this one isn't as obvious as you are face to face now with me, but the most common interpretation of this vocal is the word dancing, making the full B section lyrics, you are dancing. See if you can hear it. To me, this is such a fascinating exercise, one that reveals just how malleable our perception really is. So much of what we experience isn't fixed or objective, but rather influenced by context, expectation, and our own personal histories. I'm not sure I would have heard dancing in that sample on my own, but once I read about that interpretation, I couldn't unhear it. Especially given the context of a dance track. And knowing Daft Punk's long history of writing about music and dancing, it's a phenomenon Todd Edwards himself has compared to pareidolia, which is the tendency for humans to perceive patterns or meaning where none objectively exist. Like seeing faces in clouds or constellations in the stars, our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world, to organize randomness into something recognizable and meaningful. And while those patterns may not be real in a literal sense, they become real in how we experience them, which I think actually speaks to something deeper about the human experience, how so much of our reality is subjective, how our perception of others and even ourselves, is filtered through our own history, insecurities and expectations. And it's no coincidence that these same thematic ideas show up in Face To Face's actual lyrics, which were written and performed by Todd Edwards himself. As we listen, I want you to think about who he might be singing to.