Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You

Friday July 10, 2009 · By

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We close the week with one of the most influential dance tracks of our time (well, at least my time). This single track launched the entire disco/filtered house genre in the spring of 1998.

Prior to this track, lots of house music used vocals and disco samples, and lots of various effects, but it was all just considered standard house music. Then Thomas Bangalter (one half of Daft Punk) was messing around with Alan Braxe (another producer) and Benjamin Diamond (a vocalist) at a live set, and they cooked this track up basically on the fly.

The distinctive sound was created by applying a simple low pass filter sweep effect, something that Daft Punk used on the digital sounds of “Homework” to moderate success, to a snippet of disco–in this case, Chaka Khan – Fate.

It went from the clubs of Paris to a worldwide phenomenon during the Winter Music Conference in March of 1998. It took the annual gathering of djs, producers, and execs by storm. Over the following weeks/months/years, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a song based on some filtered disco sample. The most remarkable thing about it was just how well it seemed to work.

It was pretty neat watching this thing unfold. I was a budding house dj at the time, but I couldn’t afford the trip down to WMC. Like any good nerd, I had resorted to following the action online. Before I even heard this track, I read about it on listservs and message boards (shout outs to the old Astralwerks message board crew). A couple weeks later, it was everywhere. It was a cool fusion of music, technology, and culture.

As for the video, again we have a kid escaping to his imagination to cover up the troubles in his life… in this case, the constant fighting of his parents. But y’all don’t want to hear that, you just want to dance.