Homework (Daft Punk Album) - Recording History

Recording History

In 1993 Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo presented a demo of their own electronic music to Stuart Macmillan of Slam at a rave in EuroDisney. The contents of the cassette eventually saw release on the single "The New Wave" on April 11, 1994 on Slam's Soma Quality Recordings label. Daft Punk returned to the studio in May 1995 to record "Da Funk", and the same year, it was released alongside "Rollin' & Scratchin'" as singles under the Soma label.

We've got much more control than money. You can't get everything. We live in a society where money is what people want, so they can't get the control. We chose. Control is freedom. People say we're control freaks, but control is controlling your destiny without controlling other people.

—Thomas Bangalter, in regards to the duo's creative control and freedom

The ensuing popularity of Daft Punk's singles led to a bidding war among record labels, which resulted in the duo signing to Virgin Records in 1996. Their departure was noted by Richard Brown of Soma. He stated that "We were obviously sad to lose them to Virgin but they had the chance to go big, which they wanted, and it's not very often that a band has that chance after two singles. We're happy for them."

Virgin re-released "Da Funk" with the B-side "Musique" in 1996, before releasing Homework. Bangalter later stated that the B-side "was never intended to be on the album, and in fact, 'Da Funk' as a single has sold more units than Homework, so more people own it anyways than they would if it had been on the album. It is basically used to make the single a double-feature." The album was mixed and recorded in their own studio, Daft House in Paris, France. It was mastered by Nilesh Patel at the London studio The Exchange.

Bangalter expressed that "To be free, we had to be in control. To be in control, we had to finance what we were doing ourselves. The main idea was to be free." Daft Punk discussed their method with Spike Jonze, director of the "Da Funk" music video. He noted that "They were doing everything based on how they wanted to do it. As opposed to, 'oh we got signed to this record company, we gotta use their plan.' They wanted to make sure they never had to do anything that would make them feel bummed on making music." Although Virgin Records hold exclusive distribution rights over Daft Punk’s material, the duo remain the owners of their master recordings through the Daft Trax label.