Yesterday, the duo released their new album on iTunes for the early listening pleasure. As a faithful fan throughout the years and as a fan boy, I’ll try to write this review as objective as I can be. Let me just start by saying that robots have evolved and if you expected their old style, you expected wrong.

01 / Give Life Back To Music

The album opens up with this track. By the way it starts, it gives you the sense that electro, flashy, big, powerful synths that Daft Punk brought to life are gone. As they said in their interviews, this album is all about experimenting and live instruments. There’s a sense of warmth and mildness as the track progress.The track fades away slowly. Disco is back.

02 / The Game Of Love

There is a sense of “Something About Us” in this one. The story tells about a break up and heartbreaking and the vocals are hard on vocoding. As it moves on, the track goes more quiet and stops.

03 / Giorgio By Moroder

One of my favorites from this album. There was a sense of intrigue when the collab was announced and I was looking forward to it. It starts by Giorgio telling his story of his youth days and talking about the sound of the future that he wanted to make. The track is semi mellow and for some reason, the first half of it reminds me of Donna Summer‘s “I Feel Love” that Giorgio produced. As it builds up, the track gets stronger and picks up the intensity. Electro guitar starts, probably played by Thomas and the track ends with metronome type of sound slowing down. “My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio.”

04 / Within feat. Chilly Gonzales

Even though he’s not credited on the official album tracklist, you can clearly recognize the craft of Chilly Gonzales‘ piano playing. This is what Daft Punk tried to explain numerous times; they always wanted to connect the robot aspect with human emotions. The lyrics tell a story of confused and sort of sad robot. Amazing track, clear and simple.

05 / Instant Crush feat. Julian Casablancas

This one might be what I call “crowd favorite”. A few of my friends said that they simply adore it. The track continues the simple bassline from previous track and switches to previous-era-disco, warm synth and slightly vocoder altered voice. If you love Chromeo, you will worship this one.

06 / Lose Yourself To Dance feat. Pharrell Williams

Really catchy song. Next to “Get Lucky“, this is the second track that Pharrell and Nile worked on with the robotic duo. The bassline sticks in your memory like a bubble gum to concrete and I catched myself humming it a few times. There’s a feeling that Pharrell, for whom I have the utmost respect as a producer, wanted to bring the daftastique feeling to a wider range of audience, targeting especially the younger ones.

07 / Touch feat. Paul Williams

It starts as an alien type of weirdness, almost horror voice and just when you expect the old, slaying Daft Punk kick in the face, it switches to Paul‘s voice and everything calms down. It picks up from there and lives up as a rollercoaster of emotions and sounds. Violins, trumpets, drums and all other instruments used really spread the message.

08 / Get Lucky feat. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers

Guys, guys… We met the “mexican monkey“. Sigh. Just kidding. The album version differs from the radio edit. It has more space and it’s more free. You already know the sound, moving on.

09 / Beyond

Woah. The track has for sure the most powerful lyrics of all other packing this album. It’s emotional content really brings up the feelings and makes you think about stuff. For some reason, the bassline reminds me of their “Solar Sailer” from TRON soundtrack. Sweet.

10 / Motherboard

Makes you feel like you’re in a movie. Perfect for a soundtrack. Also has the TRON feeling in the back. It ends quietly, adding the bubbly water sound to the end.

11 / Fragments Of Time feat. Todd Edwards

Todd said something amazing and really interesting to me in his Collaborators video, which is that “it’s kinda ironic; two robots bring back the soul into music.” Track has an interesting, faster pace than others.

12 / Doin' It Right feat. Panda Bear

If you ever listened to Animal Collective, you’ll love this one. That’s all it needs to be said.

13 / Contact feat. DJ Falcon

This is the only track that has a sample in the entire album and it’s not of musical nature. The sample is from an astronaut seeing an unindetified object and explaining it. The story behind it is that nickname of DJ Falcon is Bob, and the astronaut explains stuff to some guy named Bob. The track is master powerful and has an amazing tempo. It’s all about the live instruments in this one. The duo ends the album phenomenally violent, like they’re trying to make a point.

To sum it up, the robots evolved. They once again brought us something fresh and new. The thing with them is that they won’t give you what you expect and they don’t repeat themselves. I like this album. It ceirtanly isn’t their best, but I like it. Also, they are scheduled to make remixes of this album (as well as million of other people), so we’ll see how it goes. This is not the end of Daft Punk. Remember, “our work is never over.”

Listen to the album here.